How to Care for Jadeite Dishes

Whether you’ve just bought your first piece of jadeite glass or you’ve acquired a museum quality collection, you take pride in showing off your dishes, discussing the history of them, and taking care of your investment.

Here are a few quick tips on how to care for your Fire-King Jadeite glass collection:

How to Clean Your Jadeite Dishes

Keeping your Jadeite dishes looking their best just requires some simple care. All it requires is some hot soapy water and a little scrub after each use. Make sure to handwash your dishes each time you use them, and you’ll have a beautiful looking collection for a long time to come.

Can you Put Jadeite Dishes in the Dishwasher?

NO! Never, ever put your jadeite in the dishwasher! These old dishes were never meant to go in the heavy duty dishwashers we have today. Over time you’ll find your jadeite will lose its luster and it will destroy the value of your glassware, and no one wants that.

How to Restore Jadeite Dishes

First, there’s a difference between dishwasher damaged jadeite, and ones that need a good ol’ scrub. Dishwasher damaged jadeite tends to feel rough and looks dull. Unfortunately this stuff was never made for the dishwasher so if it’s taken multiple spins in there, it’s likely beyond repair when it comes to collectable value.

However, if your jadeite has been well used the way it was intended and has some baked on food stains, you can easily get those out with:

• Barkeepers Friend
• Magic Eraser
• Hot water
• A little elbow grease!

Barkeepers Friend is well known in the Pyrex and glass collector community for taking out those tough stains. And it will make your kitchen and bathroom sparkle too!

Just sprinkle some on a piece of jadeite and start scrubbing it in with a wet magic eraser. Let it sit for a minute and then rinse with hot water.

Barkeepers Friend is safe to use on your jadeite as it works as a mild cleaner and polish that won’t damage the clear coat on your jadeite.

Oops! I Broke a Jadeite Dish. Now What?

Oh no! Cleaning up shattered glass from your prized collection is never fun. We want to use our jadeite, rearrange it and show it off, and make memories, but sometimes accidents happen and one can go crashing to the floor. Once you’ve cleaned up the unfortunate mess, there is one really cool thing you can do to preserve the memories of that dish…

Make jewelry with it!

Here’s a picture of some earrings and a necklace we made out of a broken jadeite bowl. We didn’t have any special tools or a Dremel to drill holes in the glass, although you can certainly do that if you have a diamond drill bit.

We simply hand-sanded down the edges to make them not so sharp and then went to the local jewelry store to pick out some matching jadeite colored beads, some essential oil beads, wire and earring hooks.

For both the earrings and necklace we wire wrapped the piece of glass with craft wire. You’ll want to watch a quick tutorial on how to wire wrap stones if you’ve never done it before. Give yourself a few practice rounds to get the hang of it.

You should be able to get the rest of the supplies you need at your local jewelry or arts and crafts store for relatively cheap with no special tools required other than some pliers and scissors.

And now you’ve taken that broken piece of glass that was destined for the garbage and turned it into a unique gift for a fellow jadeite lover.

How to Display Your Fire-King Jadeite Glass Collection

There are so many different ways you can show off your Jadeite glass collection. It’s a chance for you to be creative and switch up your displays as you build your collection.

We were lucky enough to scoop up a bunch of clear acrylic risers that are used for merchandising products in stores.

Plate stands are also essential for showing off your plates and platters and can be bought cheaply at dollar stores.

And if you like building things with your hands, make sure to check out Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, garage sales, and thrift stores for some cheap or free hutches, china cabinets and bookshelves people are looking to get rid of.

You can turn it into a weekend project and restore a hutch to give it the look you want by sanding it down and repainting it to make a beautiful new home for your jadeite collection.

And for insurance purposes we recommend documenting your collection. We have taken pictures of all our jadeite and researched the completed listings on eBay to get the approximate value. We turned this into a coffee table book (binder) which guests always find fascinating.

If you’re just starting your collection, some vintage wooden crates always make good display stands for Jadeite. The ones with slots in them also make a great shelf for displaying your Jadeite mugs!

Can You Use Jadeite Dishes?

Some may call us crazy, but we love making memories by using our jadeite glassware daily! We’ve ditched our regular plates and now just use a select few Restaurantware Jadeite plates and bowls. Everyone in the house is well trained to hand-wash the dishes after each use and never to put them in the dishwasher. We use paper plates occasionally when we’re feeling lazy, but for the most part we just absolutely love making a delicious home cooked meal and serving it on a Jadeite plate. Jadeite just make everything taste better. I’d argue that it’s science! 😉

We’ve even been known to bake an apple crisp or two in our jadeite pie plate. Just like Pyrex, Fire-King Jadeite glassware was designed to go in the oven. These dishes are workhorses and baking a pie in it just brings us back to a simpler time.

Just remember these important tips if you want to make memories using your jadeite:

1. Handwash your jadeite glassware only with hot soapy water.
2. Never put your jadeite in the dishwasher.
3. Never put your jadeite in the microwave.
4. Never put your jadeite on the stovetop. (Sadly I’ve cracked a dish doing this – but thankfully it was a less expensive white chili bowl).

Depending on your personal preference, you may want to enjoy using your jadeite glassware to eat from, or just be proud to show off your collection with a lovely display.

Either way, the important part is to create memories with your jadeite and spark joy!