Keeping China & Antiques Clean
Porcelain and fine bone china are your friends: they are the two hardest ceramics. They are also relatively easy to care for:
How To Clean Antique China and Dinnerware
- If your dinnerware does not have metal on it, it can certainly go in the dishwasher.
- Ask if there is metal on the dinnerware. Many dinnerware manufacturers today are selling items with metal trim—or much more metal—that is dishwasher-safe if you follow a few rules:
– Use the china cycle on your dishwasher.
– Use a detergent that does not contain citric acid (e.g., lemon).
– Turn your heated drying cycle off, which is easy to do. Heated drying will destroy the metal on your dinnerware. (If you don’t have an owner’s manual for your dishwasher, you should be able to pinpoint it online). - If you have older dinnerware with metal that you are not using because you think it has to be hand washed, think again. It can probably go in the dishwasher.
– Test with a smaller piece, such as a bread or dessert plate, first; and do not mix other metals in the dishwasher at the same time.
– If you get a good result, you have your answer.
– Rather than not using a beautiful dinnerware service, use it and wash it in the dishwasher. The life of the service may be shortened by a generation—your grandchildren or great grandchildren may not inherit it—but when we caution our customers about this, most of them just laugh. - Storage: For most dinnerware, stacking is just fine. If the dinnerware has a lot of detail on it—and particularly if it has a lot of metal on it—you should invest in felt dividers to go between plates and bowls before stacking.