Leslie,

As a conservator I think there are two important things here.

First, in a move it is most important that the furniture be handled
professionally with care. So no picking up chairs by the arms, having
proper padding, moving when you have a clear path, and so on. Art handlers
are usually very good at what they do. You or someone on your staff, should
review the condition of the furniture to see if there are pieces with
special problems, such as loose joins, lifting veneer, etc. Make sure to do
that before the move. You also should meet with a representative of the art
moving company to go over the furniture in storage and have then come up
with a plan for the move that you agree on.

Temperature is not as big an issue as relative humidity is for wooden
objects. So you either need to do the move in a time when the relative
humidity in the historic house is close to the relative humidity that has
been in storage, or you need to slowly ramp the relative humidity in
storage to come as close as you can to that of the environment of the
house. You need to be careful heating the building in the winter because
you can bake the relative humidity pretty low and that can cause historic
wood to shrink, and cause cracks and weaken or break glue joins.

If you have worked with a furniture or wooden artifacts conservator this is
a good time to bring them in to consult on all this.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Senior Conservator & Museum Consultant
Los Angeles CA  USA
www.cityofangelsconservation.weebly.com

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 4:55 AM, Leslie Vollnogle <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> My supervisor wanted me to post a question concerning moving furniture by
> professional art handlers.  Does anyone have any suggestions on the best
> way to move historically significant furniture with direct provenance and
> significance to the mission of our museum?  We will be moving it from a
> climate controlled storage unit of another institution and will most
> probably be moving it directly to a historic house, unless there is another
> storage option.  Most of the furniture originally came from this historical
> house, and was there for nearly 100 years, but has been in a climate
> controlled storage unit for the last 10 years or so.  The historic house
> has heat but no air conditioning.   We will be moving the furniture
> sometime in September or so.  A lot of the furniture will be on exhibit at
> the house on the lower two floors which are heated in the winter, but some
> of it will  probably need to be stored on the third floor where it might
> not be heated.
>
>
>
> Here is my supervisor’s question.
>
>
>
> Question: Does packing, moving and unpacking take a toll on furniture?  We
> have heard that this might be the case—but would like to get your thought
> on this.  In our case the work would be done by professional art handlers,
> not by museum staff or by general moving contractors.  Thank you.
>
>
>
>
>
> Any thoughts or suggestions would be most appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
> Leslie A. Vollnogle
>
> Collections Manager
>
> Longyear Museum
>
> 1125 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
>
> T 617.278.9000 x315| F 617.278.9003  | www.longyear.org
>
>
>
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