Polished Silver for the First Time

Yesterday at the museum we had a donors family come in to see the collection they had donated, so we had to set up a small exhibit for them to view the artifacts. I learned how to carefully move old paintings around, how to dust paintings properly with the right type of brushes, and how to polish silver. It was my first time ever touching silver so it was a new experience for me.
Silver tarnishes over time and curators often have to take the silver objects out to polish them (removing the tarnish with calcium carbonate or silver cleaning cloths). When dealing with older silver pieces, it's best to wear gloves so that the oil on your fingers doesn't stain the silver.
And so I polished a badly tarnished silver trophy cup until it looked like-new again. The process took about 25-30 minutes, which is actually pretty short according to my mentor. Sometimes it can take longer depending on how bad the damage is.

 This is a portion of what I set up. 

 The cup on the right is the tarnished silver trophy.

And this is what the cup looked like after I finished polishing it.

 Another part of the collection we were showing off.

 Close up of my favorite painting out of the small collection.

 Me. Polishing silver with calcium carbonate.

What I did today was completely different! I got to transcribe a probate inventory of Smauel Ogle's estate. A probate inventory is basically a list of all the things a person owned, along with the value of each item. The inventory monetary value I was given is in the English Pound.

Here is a picture of what the handwriting looked like. It took a long time to read what I needed to transcribe...