The Huntington Library Art Collections include several thousand 18th. century British paintings, sculpture, furniture and porcelains.

We set about planning a storage space to be housed in an 8000 square foot unused gallery located in a separate building, said Bryan Cooke, from Cooke's Crating.

This space was ideally suited for storage with high ceilings and a centrally situated roll up truck door. Our first task was to measure every object to determine the total square footage and volume the collections occupied.

Bryan entered this information on Excel and used the spreadsheet to calculate the storage space required. He determined by rough calculations that only 50% of the floor space could be used for storage, the remainder was needed for aisle and door access. This left 4000 square feet for collection storage, but 10,000 square feet would be needed. To increase square footage the collections would need to be stacked.

MOVE PROTOCOL
Most of the objects were to be stored for only two years and for this reason they decided to use 14 foot high industrial pallet racking to save costs.

– I drew a scale floor plan and spent a week working on the shelving layout taking into account city codes, sufficient aisle access, and rack stability, because San Marino is in an earthquake zone and stability is very important.

Cooke's also built vertical bulkheads into some of the pallet racks for painting storage. The heaviest objects would occupy the lowest shelves on pallets to further anchor them.

– Our second task was to establish a move protocol for our employees, Bryan Cooke said.

This information and instructions for handling each object were added to the Excel spreadsheet. Using this program the employees would know what size crate to build, how to pack and move the objects and what shelf location to place an object.

– We could also track job progress and use the information for invoicing the client.

NO TRUCKS
The Huntington House lacked loading docks and we decided it would be safer moving art and artifacts if we did not use trucks and lift gates for loading and unloading.

– Our craters constructed 4 oversized “A” frames fitted with large Pneumatic swivel tires, useful for absorbing most of the vibrations during the move.

Uncrated sculpture and furniture, and accumulations of packed cartons, were moved using oversized pallets, topped with 3/4” plywood. These were very stable and the objects and cartons were secured onto these pallets using ratchet straps or shrink-wrap. Cooke's used pallet jacks, one at each end for easy maneuvering across the museum campus. Heavy objects, such as marble sculptures, and fragile objects were crated and moved by air ride truck.

–The collections packing and move took five men nearly eight months to complete and despite the difficulties the job was successfully completed under budget and on schedule, ends Bryan.

Using the survey Cookes Crating determined the square feet of shelving required, and how high each shelf needed to be installed to accommodate different sized objects.