Storing Precious Artefacts in Tool Boxes

Who'd of thought?

Admittedly it seems the most unlikely thing on first inspection, rare artefacts stored in toolboxes. But the art and museum industry have been using Polstore drawer cabinets since the 1960’s.

If you look at the requirements for storing tools within a drawer cabinet, it is somewhere that is safe, stable, secure and with the ability to hold specific items in specific locations, which is exactly the same for the art and museum sector.

Prior to using metal drawer cabinets the industry traditionally used wooden plan chests, these had a number of disadvantages, as they weren’t very secure, the drawers wouldn’t extend fully and would often jam as they relied on simple wooden rails, they weren’t particularly easy to divide up, which in turn led to artefacts being damaged and they harboured pests, such as the beetles, which would make their home in the wooden plan chest, whilst they devoured the collection.

All these problems went away by using Polstore’s heavy duty drawer cabinets. The collection was now safe and secure, with the integral anti-tilt mechanism / locking mechanism, preventing theft and accidents (due to more than one drawer being opened at a time). The drawers extended fully, allowing complete access to the collection and the dividing system allowed maximum use of the drawer without the risk of the collection being damaged.

Many museums, recognising the robustness and security of our cabinet, took them one step further and by adding lockable security glass panels, they turned them into robust drawer display cases. Which allowed the collection to be viewed, whilst offering piece of mind, that not only were the collections secure, but the cabinets themselves would shrug off the abuse that the general public can give them.

With museum archives often being placed in the most in-accessible corners of the museum, they also adopted our universal shelving system, which allowed them to build up large drawer cabinets in situ, through the most difficult of access.