A Frameless Masterpiece For The NUS Museum

How to hold and display a ton of ancient pottery safely and securely.

The NUS Museum has over 8,000 artefacts and artworks across four diverse collections ranging from classical Chinese and Indian materials to modern and contemporary Southeast Asian and Singaporean art. The Museum remains an integral part of the National University of Singapore as a resource for teaching and research, furthering the University’s mission to transform the way people think and work through education, research, and service.

In 2007, Trika delivered on the NUS Museum’s director, Ahmad Mashadi’s requirement for a totally frameless, standalone vitrine to hold more than a ton of ancient pottery artefacts. The principal showcase will need to be fully demountable, and modular with a highly secure and robust case structure that can withstand the rigours and use as Singapore’s oldest museum research institute. The location within the NUS Museum was specified as an anchor or main display area that sums up the diverse South and South East Asian collection which makes up for the major portion of the museum’s collection.

The team from Trika then developed a demountable case system that allows for fuss-free assembly using new surface-bonded technology. In this gallery, a record of speed installation was achieved within 4 hours to install 8 bays of 900mmWidth x 900Depth x 2300mmHeight modules. This approach of engineering a purpose-built case system and its easy and rapid method of installation later gave rise to the Trika Demountable Showcase System.

Developing a complete case system that flawlessly delivers on all aspects of museum conservation case-making.

This new system later birthed the popular slimline Turin Demountable option.

For high security, the engineering team from Trika developed each door access to be fastened by 9mm solid stainless steel bolted actuating locks that delivers a two-step locking system. Unlike European standards where a separate T-bar is used to unlatch the secondary steel bolting actuator, Trika uses only a single key suiting from ABLOY to address the two-step security opening system.

This gave rise to the Trika patented Double-Locking System that is being used in almost all our case systems today.

Within each bay, 9 led downlights deliver beam-controlled spotlighting onto the 5 levels of pottery shards and curated relics. Some of these artifacts dated back to the 18th century when the Fort Canning Hill was then a centre of the burgeoning trading frontier of early Singapore.

After more than ten years of reliable performance, the same 8-bay showcase has witnessed many milestones in the museum’s calendar of events and has been a major part of the museum’s relocation of their contemporary installations from the ground floor to its current location on the third level.