Turtle, a world-renowned specialist in art handling, develops sustainable solutions for art packaging. The Dutch art packaging company aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2023 It’s likely that his grandfather couldn’t see anything breaking, especially as it was not uncommon for horse-drawn carts to be used to transport boxes of furniture in his day. In 1926, he founded the moving company Van Kralingen in The Hague. The father […]
His grandfather probably couldn’t see anything breaking, especially as in his day it was not uncommon for horse-drawn carts to be used to transport boxes of furniture. In 1926, he founded the moving company Van Kralingen in The Hague. His father continued to develop the business in the 1960s, working with high-end clients such as embassies, galleries and museums, which in those early days of museum logistics rarely commissioned specialized moving companies to transport art. When it was Hizkia Van Kralingen’s turn in 1990, he focused exclusively on the art industry. Large national museums began to exhibit Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Mondrian and Van Gogh all over the world. This created the need for a reusable and climate-proof crate to protect the paintings, instead of the less stable wooden containers that dominated transportation at the time and had to be opened with a screwdriver. The wooden crate was simply thrown away after the painting was returned at the end of the exhibition. Hizkia van Kralingen therefore invented the reusable Turtle.
He got the idea from surfing friends who used polyester resins for their surfboards. He used the same resins to design a strong protective case. This was the beginning of the world-famous Turtle brand. The second generation of crates, which offer protection against even the smallest fluctuations in relative humidity and temperature, are completely high-tech. They contain composite materials that are used by NASA in its rockets. And the keyword sustainability comes up again and again. Turtle now offers a whole catalog of sustainable packaging solutions tailored to the specific requirements of each artwork and transport. Thanks to an independent rental concept, Turtles are also available to anyone, anywhere.
“Our most important goal is to optimize shock and vibration technology”
The high level was achieved through an easy-to-use, modular system and years of research, including extensive testing. The minimum service life of the Turtle is now 30 years, which can be extended by a further decade thanks to an overhaul program. The company is also a guarantor of innovation. “Our most important goal is to optimize the vibration and oscillation technology,” says Van Kralingen. “We have also developed the Turtle Climate Cabinet for transporting 3D objects and horizontal works of art. A useful addition to this is the Turtle Reader, a data logger. The courier logs into the Turtle Reader using the Turtle App. By reading out all the data, he can determine the ideal moment for unpacking with pinpoint accuracy.”
A new packaging method was recently used to transport Mondrian’s triptych “Evolution”. The extremely delicate painting is part of the art collection of the Kunstmuseum in The Hague. The central panel measures 183 x 87.5 cm, the wings 178 x 85 cm – making “Evolution” the largest work in Mondrian’s oeuvre. Lending it has repeatedly presented the museum with insurmountable challenges. In 2021, thanks to Turtle, it was finally possible to transport the panels to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where they were shown in the “Origins of the World” exhibition until the spring. A scientist from the TU Berlin helped with this. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kerstin Kracht, an expert in vibration technology and engineer for structural mechanics, investigated the fatigue fracture behavior of oil paintings on textile picture carriers whose paint layer contains zinc soaps, inspired by questions such as: Which vibration protection is best for a painting? What do the stitching and bonding of cracks actually mean for the mechanical stability of a painting?
In 2009, Kracht worked with a Berlin-based company to vibration-isolate the base for the world-famous bust of Nefertiti in the Neues Museum Berlin and in 2019 developed a vibration-isolated pedestal for the Golden Table of Lüneburg, an altar weighing 700 kilograms. In “Evolution”, she discovered delaminations, i.e. lifts in the paint layer structure. They react extremely sensitively to dynamic forces such as vibrations and shocks. Kracht therefore developed a process with which the weak points of a painting can be uncovered through various scans. These scans made it possible to find out what measures had to be taken to reduce harmful vibrations and impacts so that the painting was not damaged during transportation.
Presentation Collection Care Online Conference 2021: The Origin of the T+ on Vimeo
The “T+ corner blocks”, which fixed the artwork in the crate, are an unprecedented invention designed to dampen vibrations and shocks. The use of Wire Rope Isolators has contributed to the success of this solution. They have the property of reducing the vibration energy and thus the effects on the painting during transportation. They are also insensitive to ageing and, unlike conventional foam, still offer stable protection against shocks and vibrations even after 20 years. Test results show that it is precisely this combination of the hard outer shell of the crate with the effect of the Wire Rope Isolators that enables optimum vibration damping.
In turn, the Turtle’s long lifespan means that no wooden crates for artworks need to be produced for decades, saving more than two trees a year for every Turtle used. The insulation of the crate can also be recycled, reducing the environmental footprint of each use. The climate-controlled packaging of the artworks is also particularly robust and equipped with vacuum-insulated panels that ensure an optimal climate inside the crate.
