Service

Maintain your antiques

At Nostalgia we try to select our products on quality and authenticity. Every item is unique and being antiques, most items are probably used. Therefore it’s inevitable to find traces of usage, wear and tear. We make sure our products are restored and reconditioned to our best abilities before they go on sale. Anyone buying antiques has to take into account that antiques sometimes require special care and attention.

These cleaning tips are added to the Nostalgia Service page to help you maintain your purchase to your best abilities. All of these methods are used by Nostalgia to clean, restore and maintain our collection;

Glass and crystal
The glass and crystal ornaments on chandeliers, picture frames, tableware, glasses, etc. are easily cleaned with hot water and ammoniac. Beware of the ammoniac fumes in combination with hot steamy water, make sure you ventilate properly. A beautiful, long lasting shine will be your reward. (using white spirit will often leave a blue veil)

Silverware
Silverware and silver plated materials have to be polished with special silver polish or using a special non-fluffing silver polish cloth. When a silver layer is damaged or worn thin you can re-silver-plate these items using a special silver plating polish, which contains real silver. Also damage marks such as scratches or engravings in solid silver items can be repaired or removed.

Jewellery
After a while, jewellery starts to look dull and dirty, which is caused by sebaceous grease from your skin and external pollutions. To clean silver and golden jewellery you can use a special jewellery cleaning bath or you can use a gold & jewellery shine cloth. Don’t use silver polish on fine and detailed jewellery because the polish will accumulate in the delicate textures and features and will be hard to remove when dried out.

Woodwork
For all solid or veneered wooden surfaces with lacquer, oil, paint wax and stain we use furniture oil, antiques or bees wax which naturally nourishes furniture preventing it from drying out. Sometimes it’s necessary to use a furniture wax remover first. For wax-in AND wax-off always use a soft, non fluffy cloth! Tip: an old T-shirt works absolutely fab!

To removes ring marks and stains left by water and alcohol, to effectively restore discoloured furniture and even camouflages scratch marks we use a special maintenance product called HG Meubeline.

Coral and gemstones
We clean jewellery containing coral, gems, precious or semi-precious stones with just a few drops of olive oil! The oil soaks off the dirt, you gently use a soft toothbrush to remove any loose dirt from the delicate textures and features. The oil will also slowly penetrate a porous gem and restore it’s glorious shine.

HG products
Many of the products mentioned above are sold by a company named HG International. They probably only sell in Europe but you can browse the HG website and/or ask Nostalgia for advise about what kind of product to use best.

As a special service all buying customers can contact Nostalgia about sending along specifically required HG products to maintain their purchase. For more information, a pricelist and possible additional post & package, please contact Nostalgia.