The Alinari Museum, Florence - time for thorough tidying

Florence is one of the world’s capitals of photography. It achieved this status owing to three brothers: Leopoldo, Giuseppe and Romualdo Alinari. Their company, Fratelli Alinari, set up in mid-19th century, gained international recognition due to exceptional photographs of Italian art and monuments as well as portraits commissioned by the crowned heads, aristocracy and representatives of the world of art, culture and politics. These collections of photographs, accumulated over decades, can now be admired at the National Museum Alinari of Photography. One of the most valuable exhibits is a collection of 350 000 glass plate negatives, which had been made at the three brothers’ studio since 1852. Long-term preservation of this collection proved to be one of the biggest challenges for the archivists and restorers at Archivio Storico Fratelli Alinari, who are responsible for these collections. The Archivio Storico team contacted Beskid and asked whether it was possible to produce special custom-made storage boxes. It took numerous hours of talks, preliminary sketches and designing over a dozen of prototypes, but as a result we succeeded in meeting the expectations of the collection owners, we were commissioned the production of the boxes and, in an exceptionally short time of just 3 months, we managed to provide over a dozen thousand (folded) negative storage boxes, measuring 21 x 27 cm as well as boxes whose dimensions exceeded the format of 50 x 60 cm! The Florentine restorers and archivists have kindly allowed us to publish some of the photos, included in the gallery below, showing this extraordinary tidying project and the relocation of the collection to a modern storage facility located in the suburbs of Florence.

A 21 x 27 cm negative storage box. The outer walls of the box are made from 1.3-mm-thick Castello cardboard (ISO 16245 A, PAT), A-type partitions from 1.0-mm-thick cardboard.  

Photograph storage boxes with lids, made from 3-mm-thick corrugated board (ISO 9706, PAT, Colour PAT)

The most complex box of the project. The outer walls are made from 1.3-mm-thick Castello cardboard (ISO 16245 A, PAT), the partitions (shelves) from a sheet of corrugated board (ISO 9706, PAT, Colour PAT), folded three times. Stainless steel rivets provide support to the box structure and the cotton ribbon is used to secure the box.  

A 50 x 60 cm box for large-sized negatives.

"The world of things in order!"

According to Claudio di Polo – the President  of Alinari since 1984 - "it’s the greatest transfer of photographs in the world."A lift and a forklift used to load the negatives.