With the wide variety of costumes, the brief was to remove the existing storage and plan a scheme on the ground floor and mezzanine level which would maximise the available area whilst allowing the collections to be easily identified and handled in a controlled environment.
The dress collection includes garments worn by members of the royal family from the time of Charles I to the mid-20th century, clothing by London-based designers including Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood and costumes associated with the theatre and the performing arts.
Together with the hanging costumes, there was a further requirement for shelf storage for 1,317 differing sizes of boxes, small and large rolled textiles up to 2.5m, outsized items and hanging drawer storage – in excess of 200 linear metres.
Rackline primarily used their Profile shelving and Multitrak mobile bases with zero formaldehyde infill floors on the ground and mezzanine levels to maintain the controlled environment.
Rackline provided 230 bays of storage in four different heights, five different widths, and four depths around the removable storage to create the required layout capacity.
Rackline utilised other products from their portfolio to complete the installation including Prospan shelving for the storage of outsize objects such as metal trunks and pin hinge doors on the units to securely store smaller items; i.e. bags, bonnets, hats, shoes and books.
Rackline moved and reused the existing plan chests to complete the installation.
“Rackline have provided a totally bespoke solution for the storage of our dress and textile objects that has allowed us to store our entire collection in a controlled environment and that also looks good.”
Sharon Robinson – Collections Care Manager
