By Helen Alten 

Housings should:

• Provide support and protection
• Enable study with minimal handling
• Be constructed using materials that have good aging characteristics and versatility

- Philadelphia Museum of Art (Rehousing the Costume and Textile Collection)

Walk into storage. Pick out any box. Open it up. What do you see?

In most museums, the inside of the box is the unseen, unnoticed, misunderstood cause of damage to the collections within.

But you know you have done the right thing, because you bought those incredibly expensive acid-free storage boxes and now the entire storage area is a lovely shade of gray. Or cream. Or blue.

The box isn't the end of the story for the object. How it is put into the box is as important as buying the correct box. One of the first rules of good storage is, "No object should bear the weight of another object." Stacking causes crushing, distortion, cracks, tears and splits.

Inside the box

Look inside the box again. What do you see? Are there 15 dresses folded and stacked on top of each other? Are there hundreds of Ziploc baggies holding little ephemera - pins, cards, ribbons - all stuffed in the box? Are there three or four different objects inside, perhaps rolled up in acid-free tissue paper?

If a box contains more than one object, then it needs trays, shelves, and separators or dividers inside the box. For small objects, there are commercially available trays that fit inside a document box. But for larger objects, such as a textile box, you might have to make the tray and its supports.

Do contents shift?

Tilt your box gently. Do the contents shift and move? Then you know they aren't well stored. An object stored well inside an acid-free box won't shift when the box is moved or tilted, because it is well supported and braced with the same care one would take to support the object if it was on exhibit.

Removing contents

Another storage precept is: "All objects should be well supported." This means well supported in storage, transit and exhibit. Think about how you remove the contents of the box. Do you reach in and pull things out? Are they well supported when you do that? If an object, especially a flexible object, is on a support tray or shelf, you can lift out the tray or shelf, and the object remains fully supported. You don't have to touch the object when removing it from the box. And that tray becomes a handling support, making it easier to move the item from one spot to another.

A storage box from the Logan Museum shows how objects are stored on removable shelves.

Storage trays, shelves and supports can be made from acid-free foamcor, acid-free corrugated cardboard (usually a double ply with corrugations at right angles to each other), or rigid polyethylene foam.

The trays need to be padded. One method: cover the rigid support with needle-punched polyester quilt batting covered with washed muslin or other cotton fabric. Another method: cover the rigid support with one-quarter inch polyethylene foam covered with acid-free tissue paper.

Cotton twill tape ties hold objects on the trays.

Irregular shapes are padded with polyethylene foam support mounts or cotton stockinette pillows. Polyethylene rods, made to fill cracks in buildings and cement, are extremely useful to brace items on storage trays. These rods are known as backer rods or tri-rod.

Final principles

The final principle of good storage is that it increases the life-span of the object. This means it mitigates all 10 of the agents of deterioration. The acid-free box you purchased reduces contaminants, radiation (light) damage, and buffers relative humidity fluctuations. But it needs help to reduce other agents of deterioration. The box isn't enough. It needs shelves, supports, and ties. Good padding and bracing provide support that can go a long way to defeating the physical force damages caused by gravity, vibrations, and dropping.