I just wanted to give an update on the cleaning of this weight. I managed to get hold of a one litre bottle of Rapid Fixer or 'Hypo' from a traditional photograhpic shop in Bristol. It's not that easy to get hold of, these days , as many high street photographic shops do not stock 'chemistry' as it is known in the trade. The Hypo is made by Fotospeed and is called 'Fotospeed FX20 Rapid Fixer' . It cost me just under £10 for a 1 litre bottle (not cheap !). It used to be available in much smaller bottles(pre-digital age) but not any more. see
www.fotospeed.com.
The fixer is in concentrated form and for developing photos it recommends a 1 to 4 dilution with water. I used it undiluted/neat after experimenting with it on a tarnished silver bangle . It worked very well on the bangle dipping a kitchen paper towl into the hypo. But it needed a lot of rubbing and a normal abrasive silver cleaner would be better for solid silver objects.
So I then went on to the paperweight and it worked very well , removing much of the surface tarnish . The result was that much of the grubby look has gone and it's possible to see much more of the surface iridescence. Well worth doing. The hypo does smell a bit but after 24 hours the smell goes ! This is not the case if it soaks in to wood or carpets and can last for a very,very long time !
I've added a photo of the paperweight and it doesn't look different at all !! But I can assure you that it has really improved it looking close up.
Next to the paperweight is a silver leaf decorated vase (origin unknown) . This has also been cleaned with hypo and the result was really significant ...far more shinny !
Pesonally I would really recommend this as a cleaner for silver leaf on glass or if you have a piece of silver-mounted glass and you need to clean the silver which surrounds it ! :thup: Thanks again Ross !