Columbus Neighborhoods: Preserving Family Heirlooms

Jess, thanks for having me here today. Well, thank you for having me. So what exactly is a family heirloom? So a family heirloom can be any object that's passed down through the generations. It can be any material as well. It's just anything that has a story to you and your family. Furniture is a popular one, glass and ceramics. Maybe you have some flatware or some silverware. I know that figurines are something that gets passed on as well and textiles too. So quilts and different wedding pieces maybe or something like that. So there are three basic ways that you can take care of your heirlooms. So it's environment, creating a really nice environment for it to live in because just like us, they like to be comfortable. It's creating a good storage area. So having them on display all the time can be harmful. There's multiple factors that can degrade your objects down. So you want to make sure you have a good rotation schedule. And cleaning, just like your house. Cleaning is an important part because dust can actually break down certain materials as well. Okay, let's start with environment. What's the best space to keep an heirloom in? So environment can be kind of tricky because each different type of material has a different temperature and humidity level that it likes to live in. But generally for mixed collections, if it's anywhere between 52 degrees and 60 degrees, that's a good area. And between 42 and 60 percent relative humidity. And that could vary if you want to go and look at the different materials. But you should be good with those general rules. Mostly you want something away from the light because light can damage multiple objects, not just textiles. So if you have something that's hand painted or filigree, that can also damage. And you want a cool, dry environment and one that's stable. So any kind of really radical flux in temperature or humidity can actually cause an expanding and contracting of materials, which some things are really sensitive to like wood. And so that can cause cracking. It can cause flaking of paint or adhesives. And it's not good. Okay. And what is everything on this table? So everything on this table is different ways that you can help. So we have actually a couple of different storage options here. So to keep things out of the light and dust, to prevent over cleaning, you can have a good rotation schedule. So for me, I have a couple of quilts that my grandmother made. And so I'll have one out on display, but every year or two, I'll actually switch it out with another one. So that way it doesn't get too much light. It doesn't get dust. It doesn't get damaged. And it stays pristine for whenever I pass it on. Okay, that's nice. And so when you're looking to store an object, you want to look for acid-free containers. A lot of them will say archival, but archival doesn't necessarily mean acid-free or lignin-free. And those are two materials that you definitely want to stay away from. So it can come in the form of a tissue. There's foam. So like an Ethafoam. I use that a lot for ceramics because it helps to buffer against vibrations too, which can cause cracks and damages. And they come in boxes of all shapes and sizes as well. And then what about this chair? What would we do with this? So for the chair, since it's made of wood and textile, there are a couple of different ways we can go about it. So wood, you really want to make sure whether or not it's finished or unfinished because there'll be different treatment methods. If it's unfinished, really the only thing you want to do is take a nice natural brush and dust it off really gently because if you use a cloth or something like that, it could snag on pieces of wood that you don't even see and slowly break down the chair. For finished wood, however, a nice clean microfiber cloth or a dust bunny even would work really well. You can use a thing called Renaissance Wax. A little bit goes a very long way. But I only suggest doing that only on finished woods and maybe every two to four years because you don't want to do it very often. And no harsh solvents and no commercial cleaners. And then this is a vacuum cleaner? Yes, so mine, Nilfjallisk, it's basically a variable vacuum cleaner so I can control the suction on it. And that's very important because your normal household vacuum cleaner is going to be a little bit more powerful than you want. So you do want something that you can control the suction on it. And we have our little controller here that we use. And so an important thing too as well when you're vacuuming textiles or fabric pieces on furniture, maybe a quilt, you want to use a mesh or some kind of barrier between the hose and what you're vacuuming. Because even if you don't see it, there might be particles or pieces that are coming off. Even if you're super gentle, there might still be stuff that comes off and you want to save that just in case like if you're missing a bead from a piece of clothing, you want to be able to put it back on. So I have a piece of mesh that's what we use here. You also can use pantyhose if you have it around. I know we've done that before as a cheaper option. And so what I recommend is putting that on the nozzle of your hose and at the lowest possible setting, just kind of very gently placing and removing it. So not swiping it but just putting it down and picking it back up again because you don't want to cause any abrasions that might kick up more of those fibers. So that's how you would take care of that chair. So you would basically vacuum the textile part of it and then I would just wipe down the rest of the finished wood with a microfiber cloth. Okay. And I don't think we've addressed silver. So metal can come in a variety of different forms. Silver is one of the most popular. I know there's tea services and flatware. And for metal, it doesn't always equal strong. I know we think of metal and we think it's a strong material. It can take anything. It's actually relatively weak and relatively fragile opposed to maybe something like ceramic or glass. Different metals tarnish and deteriorate at a different rate. And you don't want to polish it all the time because if you polish metal, it actually takes off the top layer of the metal piece. So if you keep polishing it down, it's actually eventually going to cause damage to the piece itself because you're taking bits and pieces of it away each time you do. That tarnish that's on there acts as a barrier too from the elements. So it kind of creates its own little coating to sit in. So if you need to display it and you do want it highly polished, I mean, you can do a polish on it. What I suggest is a dilution of sodium calcinate, which is chalk and distilled water, and polish it very gently. And then once it is nice and shining, again, you go back to your renaissance wax and you just use a very little bit just to create that coating. If you're going to eat from it, I do not recommend the renaissance wax just because it isn't food safe. So probably not a great idea, but it will keep your metal looking nice. But again, you want to make sure not to over clean. So minimal is better. Okay. Is there anything else you think is important to know about heirlooms? So there's one more type of material, and that would be ceramics and glass. They kind of go the same way. So I have a piece here. With ceramics, the big part you want to look at is whether or not it's glazed or unglazed. So unglazed will be kind of like a matte finish. It's like your terracotta sort of material. And a glaze will be nice and shiny and colorful. For unglazed, since it's so porous, you don't really want to do much with it. You don't even want to handle it all that much. You don't think about it very often, but we have oils in our hands. So every time you handle an object, it transfers a little bit of that to the object. And if it's something porous, like unfinished wood or unglazed ceramics, it could permanently damage it or stain it over time. So for unglazed, you basically just want to do a very nice light cleaning with a dry brush, preferably a natural hairbrush. And then for glazed, the glazed is a little bit less non-porous. It has kind of the same properties as glass. So you can do a dry cleaning with a microfiber cloth, or if you want to do a wet cleaning, say it has a little stain or something left over, then what I would suggest is there's a nice product called Orvis paste. And we use this a lot. Basically, we take a little bit of the paste and we distill it down with distilled water. And then like any other cleaning, you clean it down, rinse it a little bit with distilled water, but just on a cloth itself and let it air dry. Well, thanks a lot for having me today. It's been good to learn about how to preserve heirlooms. And now I'm really thinking about what I can pass down to my own children. I love clothes. So that's definitely on the list. I also have a teapot, which relates to the ceramics bit. Well, thank you for having me.