Silvery Gilded Glassware

[meatheadmerlin]

I apologize if this has been covered, but I didn't find anything about this in a search.
I have been running into gilded glassware and china
that has a silvery look to it instead of gold.
Does anyone know what metal this could be? Or how to best recover it?
My first guess would be silver or palladium, but I really don't know.

 

[rickbb]

Could be silver, doubt it's palladium. Silver has been used to decorate glassware and china for a very long time.

Test it, if silver then dilute nitric acid to dissolve and cement on copper seems to be the preferred method.

 

[g_axelsson]

It's a much more sensitive test to add a drop of salt water or HCl to a silver nitrate solution than cementing on copper.

A white precipitate that after drying turns purple in the sun is a good indicator of silver.

A drop of nitric first, then a drop of HCl if it dissolved the suspected metal. On glass you don't even have to remove it from the base material.

As a real silver test, nothing beats Schwerter's solution, http://goldrefiningwiki.com/mediawiki/index.php/Schwerter's_solution

Göran

 

[meatheadmerlin]

Thank you for the replies.
I thought it might have been palladium from a time when it was cheaper.
Silver does make more sense though.

I will have to break down and get some nitric acid next.
I do have sodium nitrate and sulfuric acid,
but I really need a proper work space before embarking on that path.
I've been limiting my recovery efforts to vinegar, peroxide, and salt
not even wanting to pull out the HCl yet.
Still mostly stockpiling materials, gathering supplies, and planning processes.

 

[goldsilverpro]

I'm thinking that most of the white metal decoration found on glassware is Platinum and
it is only about 5 millionths of an inch thick after firing. That's about $.06 per square inch. The company in the link also sells Pd

http://heraeus-preciouscolours.com/media/webmedia_local/media/broschueren/glas_industry.pdf