Research
The study of scales and historic metrology represents one of the commitments and aims which has always characterized the Museum of Scales and Balances.
The iconographic and documentary research which ‘materially’ enriches the museum heritage, along with the monographic and historical research, has been carried out in collaboration with leading experts in the field and made available to academics. Thanks to the Museum’s specialist publications, the items in the museum have thus been further enhanced and enriched.
Visitors can consult the video catalogue which features approximately 70% of the Museum collection of scales, weights and measures, including photographs and descriptions. The catalogue draws on the ministerial technical-scientific heritage catalogue records supplied by the Central Institute of Cataloguing and Documentation through the Institute for the Artistic, Cultural and Naturalistic Heritage of the Emilia-Romagna Region’.
To learn more about the catalogue records used, please visit the page www.iccd.beniculturali.it.
Restoration
The Museum is a young institute which does not have historical research units and houses a heritage of scales and weights which were already in good condition when acquired on the antiques market over the past 20 years.
For this reason, thanks to the work of retired scale makers, conservational cleaning and maintenance has been carried out rather than true restorations. These interventions have permitted the majority of the exhibited scales to remain in working order, even with the reconstruction or repair of missing smaller parts, without entering the field of stripping and repainting, the replacement of plates or ‘major’ components which integrate or greatly modify the original aspect of the object.
