Glass Rehousing (Continued)

Erica and I spent almost the entire day finishing the glass rehousing project we started yesterday. We made trays with handles to fit inside of Hollinger boxes. We set one tray at the bottom of each Hollinger box and then made "legs" out of blue board so that a second tray could float over the one on the bottom. To make the legs, we cut two identical rectangular pieces of blue board, folded them, and glued the folded sections onto the bottom of the tray. The legs slide into the area between the bottom tray and the Hollinger box and hold the second tray in place. 

Whenever possible, we reused the trays that had already been made for the glass we were rehousing. Sometimes, though, the boxes were inadequate and we had to redo them. Here is an example of one of the six boxes we made. This one housed smaller objects. 

Bottom tray of one box

Top tray of the box

Notice the lovely floating tray!

Below is an example from another box. This one housed larger glass bottles that were too tall to stand upright as they ideally should have. We wrapped them carefully in acid free tissue and placed them in the top and bottom trays of the box. We labeled the tissue with the catalog number for each bottle so they will not have to be opened to identify each bottle. For this and every other box, we listed the catalog numbers of the objects inside on the outside of each Hollinger box.

Four of the six boxes we made to rehouse glass bottles (and a few ceramics)

We decided not to pack a few of the objects we initially pulled for rehousing into the Hollinger boxes because they were more visually interesting than the plain glass bottles were were packing away. I was especially happy with my rehousing of these three Yellowstone Whiskey bottles that had previously been housed separately. I made this box to house them together and display their labels. I supported each bottle with ethafoam blocks on the sides and under the necks and attached catalog numbers to the ethafoam blocks so the bottles would not need to be handled to be identified. 

As we rehoused the glass, we photographed everything because none of the pieces had photographs in ANCS+. After we finished the housing, we changed the location in the database, uploaded the photos, and put the boxes into upright shelving. This rehousing project, along with the spoon rehousing on Monday, has opened up a significant amount of space for the objects we will be cataloging and rehousing all summer. It has also made me really appreciate the value of doing things right the first time so that people will not have to go back in a few years and rehouse objects I have cataloged!