Down below, deep under the museum...

One of the things I love, in general, is getting to go behind the scenes and see the things not everybody sees. Whether that is being backstage in a theatre, being behind the scenes in an event, or going into a museum depot - I just love to get a look around the nuts-and-bolts areas, to see how the mundane day-to-day things are handled, how stuff is stored.

Fortunately, doing museum presentations, giving workshops and demonstrating crafts at events means that I get plenty of opportunities to go backstage in the wider sense, and in a lot of different places. (Next up: the Adventon. I'm already looking forward to that.)

What is especially wonderful about the backstage-going are depots. Museums have most of their things not in the exhibition, but somewhere in storage, and these depots are absolutely fascinating. (They also serve a purpose - they are not only safe storage for historical items, but also help the museums to fulfill their obligation to further research; and not all items are in a condition that they can be on display continuously, so the depot and rotation of objects makes sure that they will last.) I have next to no pictures of depots that I can show you, though, only pictures of individual items - but then, different storage areas have as many different solutions as you can imagine, ranging from regular shelves to specialised drawer cabinets. And of course there's the good old space-saving solution:


I have no clue what these are really called, but they are basically sliding shelves that form a closed box when they are sitting right next to each other. Turn the handles (slowly - always slowly and carefully!) and a whole block of these shelves gently rolls to the side, letting you access the spot you need. These are... awesome. Absolutely, utterly awesome.