Many of us collect vintage and antique ceramics and it is rare that we come across a very good
specimen at a bargain price. And we like bargains. We often see badly stained pieces from the 1930s and generally we do not collect them. However, it seems a shame not to add them to our collection – if only we could remove that stain! This is where our journey started – we took the challenge of restoring stained pieces. We in particular collect Carlton Ware (CW) and in an earlier blog we mentioned that in Australia these wares, particular items from the salad and embossed range are often stained. We have been trialing a few deep cleaning methods and would like to share with you our progress. There are a couple of key starting points;

• Don’t try our methods out on a most prized possession – find a piece that you can practice
  on.
• We can’t accept responsibility for any bad results
• Don’t leave the containers of soaking solution anywhere near children or pets – normal
  laundry safety rules apply. Wear gloves as you might normally use in a laundry.
• If you are ok with the above – read on.

First of all, it is useful to work out what the stain might have come from. In the three CW sauce jugs that we will refer to today, when the stain leached out it looked to be oil, or vinegar and possibly Worcestershire sauce. We have some trinket plates with unknown stains, they could have possibly been fruit acids – but they are really unknowns. Most of these stains lifted with our technique.

Here is a typical jug with very old oil stains.

It wouldn’t budge with a simple warm water bath. But do try a warm water bath first. Just remember
not to suddenly change the temperature – so if you live in a cold area where the room temperature
is below 20°C, we would start off with a warm water bath, immerse your item at that temperature
and then gradually add very hot water (not boiling). Add a few drops of dish-washing liquid and leave overnight. We have had limited success with this approach on CW but it can lift stubborn and sticky surface stains.

The sodium percarbonate and hydrogen peroxide methods.

We started the experiments with the oxygenating substance, sodium percarbonate and the little
Carlton Ware tomato and lettuce jug and saucer that has seen better days. Sodium percarbonate can be found in laundry products such as Vanish soaker (note, we are not paid to mention these
products). The product we bought had a concentration of 247g/1kg (In March 2023 a 1kg container cost AUD$19). We started off by using a 1/3 cup of the powder to 3L of water. We subsequently used ½ cup of powder to 500 ml of water as the more concentrated solution worked faster. Here are some before, during and after shots. The key points are that it will take about a week to see a really cleaned up jug. Use smaller tubs to hold the item and solution, such as clean yoghurt containers. Change the water and solution at least every morning. Do not put multiple items in the one soaking tub in case the released stain transfers between items. Take photos so that you can chart the progress of the de-staining. As you can see in the photo trail, this little jug and saucer are eventually de-stained.

There are no signs of the treatment harming the ceramics. They were already crazed which was why
they stained up in the first place. All up, with the original purchase of $10 and $9.50 of Vanish (c.
500g), we have a restored jug and saucer for just under $20.

We had read that hydrogen peroxide could do the trick. Hydrogen peroxide can be bought from
chemists but we have only ever been able to buy a bottle containing a 6% w/v. This solution applied neat to our stained areas on a Royal Winton Rose bud trinket dish did not lighten or remove the stains that we were dealing with. However, in your laundry you may have a spray gun of Vanish stain remover. It is 35g/L hydrogen peroxide (a 3.5% solution and costs c. $6 for a 375 ml bottle). And while it is a more dilute solution than what we could get at a chemist, it did the trick. Perhaps it has other ingredients that are active or the fact that it is a foam and sticks to the surface of the jug is the reason it works so well. We would definitely use this over the sodium percarbonate method in future.

The real test of the hydrogen peroxide Vanish method came with a little jug that we paid $2 for (see above). It was a putrid little jug laden with dark stains but the primula pattern in the jug design is not that common so we felt it was worth a try. We did not hold out much hope for it. We were astonished that a 12 hour soak in a Vanish bath released so much stain. Perhaps it was a brown sauce such as Worcestershire sauce. This is a work in progress but we think we will get there.

In regards to the Royal Winton Rose mentioned above, a bath with the sodium percarbonate did
remove some staining but after a week there were still some blotches. So we moved on to the
Vanish hydrogen peroxide solution and while it is only a day into the treatment we are seeing some
good results.

One badly stained jug however, has proved very resistant to our Vanish bath treatments. To start
with, the stain on this buttercup CW jug and saucer (which was not so badly stained) was a bit of a
mystery. There was a tide mark at the lip but the base was not so badly stained. The stain had
leached over to the flower motif. Perhaps it was a vinaigrette sauce where the oil at the top leached
into the crazes whereas the lemon juice/vinegar at the bottom did not get so absorbed or stain.

Some final thoughts.

• We haven’t tried this method on chipped items. It could be that soaking an item in a solution where stain is released just makes it reabsorbed at the chipped location.
• Use white tubs for the soaking treatment. That way you get to see how much stain has leached out against the white background of the tub.
• Rinse the item in warm water between treatments and change the solution more frequently if a lot of stain is coming out in the first few hours etc.
• You need to weigh up the cost of the item plus treatment costs with the alternative of just
  purchasing at the outset an unstained item for your collection. For us, we like the idea of restoring once glorious items and sometimes, like with the primula CW jug, items are not so common and worth a go.
• Do not use any chloride bleach products – ever. They will harm the glaze and internal ceramics and make the item flake.
• We do not recommend that you put food stuffs in the items once they are clean. Treat them as
  ornaments after these treatments.
• If you are on-selling your items after treatment we think you should declare that the item has been restored with laundry products.

These are the products that we used with the Vanish gun containing hydrogen peroxide being our
preferred method now. You can buy these laundry products from the supermarket. We have just
bought a more concentrated hydrogen peroxide Vanish product at 50g/L and will give that a go next.

Good luck with your projects – share your results with us! We will post updates on the works in progress mentioned above.

Hop over to our online store of retro, vintage and collectibles at The Hariet Emporium and enjoy looking at our variety of ceramics, Carlton Ware, glass, kitchenalia and books.

Kind regards,

The Hariets