Ireland's tasty housekeeping and interior design history

Dramatic domestic history displays at the National History Museum show how our forebears lived and entertained. The curators spill all

Curator Edith Andrees with work by Eva Lynch

Don't you love it when a conversation goes off-piste and reveals a gem of information? This happened when a museum curator unexpectedly yielded a handy housekeeping tip. While discussing the National Museum of Ireland as a design and interior destination, Edith Andrees, curator of silver and metalwork, numismatics, and scientific instruments, reveals a fascinating reason why they can’t leave silver on display for too long: “If silver is near organic materials like wood, tarnish reacts faster.”

Edith should know, as the overseer of the museum’s Irish silver collection, spanning the 1500s through Georgian silver and up to the 1990s. So, if you love silver but loathe the cleaning, maybe it’s time to move it off its wooden surface and land it elsewhere.