The Fami Master series of drawer units to protect history in the Regional Museum of Natural Sciences

The Regional Museum of Natural Sciences of Turin (MRSN), housed in the historic building of the former Hospital of San Giovanni Battista, is dedicated to the conservation, collection and enhancement of local and globally sourced nature specimens. In addition, it carries out various activities ranging from exhibiting finds, teaching and dissemination to research in the field of the various disciplines of natural sciences.

Following the need to transfer the historical Palaeontology collections, owned by the University of Turin and managed by the MRSN on loan for use, from the historic headquarters of Palazzo Carignano to the building where the MRSN is located, a project was developed that involved building a new warehouse.

This storage facility had to meet two requirements: it had to be integrated into the museum itinerary and therefore be accessible to the public, and it had to be adequately equipped to house a very large collection of over 70,000 specimens ranging from the almost microscopic dimensions of foraminifera to the over two metres of mastodon tusks.

The museum layout project, curated by architect Massimo Venegoni, combined highly functional metal drawer units with large glass walnut cabinets, already part of the nineteenth-century furnishings of Palazzo Carignano, ensuring a welcoming atmosphere but simultaneously providing the functionality of the containers as the fulcrum.

In 2021, the investment made by the Piedmont Region allowed launching a tender for the supply of metal drawer units, which Fami took part in, having already been a supplier of the MRSN for the mineralogy and geology storage facility.

At the end of 2022, Fami is in Turin for the delivery of 228 Master series drawer units, well suited to the display requirements thanks to the versatility and configurability of the drawers with varying heights which are interchangeable and suitable for neatly housing objects and finds of different sizes.

Thanks to the Master solutions, the MRSN can benefit from:

• sturdy drawer units, with high-capacity drawers, designed to contain heavy specimens (such as the jaws and bones of large animals), ensuring an easy opening despite the weight of the contents
• drawers mounted on telescopic and flexible pull-out guides, which ensure their smooth sliding, to protect the frailty and fragility of the specimens they contain (such as shells and small bones)
• drawers equipped with anti-slip coatings to prevent the specimens from moving during opening and closing
• anti-escape closure system thanks to the patented Master vertebrate bar system
• easy identification of the different thematic areas. For this purpose, handles of different colours were chosen according to the type of finds stored (in particular: green for plants, blue for vertebrates, yellow for invertebrates, and orange for the Bellardi and Sacco collection) with dedicated labels based on the computerised archives used for cataloguing
• drawer numbering to allow an easy identification of the contents, corresponding with the collections’ databases.

The meticulous attention to customer needs, the accuracy of the details and the constant assistance during all the sales and assembly phases provided by Fami were key factors for the project’s success, enabling the creation of a highly functional storage facility available for visits within the Museum.

Thanks to this, paleontological finds of inestimable value have found their ideal setting, stored in an neat, safe and usable manner.