Stage Four — Getting It to You

Silver tarnishes. That is chemistry, not a defect, and it is the single most common thing people worry about on arrival — usually months later when a piece has warmed slightly in tone.

The certificate is not decoration. It records the metal, the weight, the date and the commission, which is what an insurer needs to schedule the piece and what any future owner needs to establish what it is. A solid silver object with no documentation is worth what someone believes it is; the same object with a certificate is worth what it is.

Keep it with the piece rather than in a drawer somewhere else. The pattern we see with commissioned work generally is that documentation and object separate within a generation, and the object then gets valued as scrap by someone who has no way of knowing what they are holding. That is the single most avoidable loss of value attached to any commissioned piece, and it costs nothing to prevent.

1. 01Insured shipping, tracked, packed for the weight.
2. 02Certificate of authenticity with purity and weight.
3. 03Photographs of the finished piece.
4. 04Care guidance that does not involve polishing it constantly.

Leave it alone. Display it out of direct sun, away from rubber and wool, and do not polish it every month — silver polish removes a microscopic amount of metal each time, and over years that adds up on a detailed surface.

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