Most of the furniture is relatively immune to smaller-scale, shorter-term fluctuations. As others have pointed out, temperature is of little concern as long as it does not rise over about 80-85 degrees. Of much greater concern is relative humidity. Several factors impact the degree of concern. First is the construction of the furniture. The construction of this particular furniture is more stable to RH changes than earlier (older) types of furniture. Second, the move of any given piece will happen within a day with limited time outdoors or in a truck. Third, if the packing technique I suggested in my previous post is used, the light-weight polyethylene bags used for move protection can be left in place in the house after other packing materials are removed. After a few days, the plastic can be removed. This will buffer (slow down) changes in RH and minimize risk of damage. Fourth, you can use low-tech methods to improve the environment in the house. Since you have air conditioning, you should have a duct system. If control of the RH (separate from temperature control) is not built into your HVAC system, stand-alone dehumidifiers can be installed in the equipment room[s] and tied to the ducts to distribute dehumidified air throughout the house in the warmer weather. In the heating season, keeping the temperature lower will raise the RH without humidifying the air. Temperature can be lowered a significant amount without risk of damage to the collections. In fact, chemical deterioration of the collections will be slowed and significant heating savings will be realized. And finally, a move in the early fall is more likely to have similar conditions in storage, outside, and in the house than at most other times of year, and as such the risk of environmental damage will be reduced. Just do not move furniture on rainy days.

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

Follow Longyear Museum on Facebook

The Museum’s Annual Appeal is underway -- you can be a supporter by making your gift today at www.longyear.org/giving

To unsubscribe from the MUSEUM-L list, click the following link:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-HOME.exe?SUBED1=MUSEUM-L&A=1