Introduction

The idea of a scientific instruments Museum was born in September 2002, soon after the new headmaster’s , Mr Francesco Rossi, arrival. At first it was thought as “ Old Chemistry and Physics Scientific Instruments Museum”, since it collected just these subjects tools, but later it was decided to change its name into “Old Textile Tools Museum”, when a specific section for textile was added, seen that Tullio Buzzi Technical Institute has always been based on textile and chemistry. At present the museum is divided into four show sections: textile, chemistry, physics and mineralogy.

The project was born in order to increase the value of the heritage the school was unconsciously looking after. Before 2002, only a display cabinet in a small studio existed: it was full of old chemistry glassware, there were some old pottery and copper objects and also several cupboards with a lot of physics school-tools inside, some of them dating back to 1886-1890.

At first the main difficulty consisted in finding the right place where to show these objects, and in which cupboards. The idea was to choose the wide central hall and the two spacious aisles as a showing room; as for the cupboards, it was decided to keep the ones the school already owned, old wooden furniture dating back to the beginning of 1900s: they were tall and wide enough, but in very bad conditions, as, till then, they had been used just to rest glasses, containers and other equipment on. In the following two years the work consisted in restoring the tools and the cupboards for these “jewels” which had emerged out of the blue! At last the museum got two new windows, given as a present by the Old-Students Association.

The new museum was officially open to all in November 2004, but at that time the textile section was not present yet. So, we started to search, gather and catalogue looms, weaving aspins, Roman scales, dynamometers and other instruments, each of them dating back to the beginning of 1900s, and which had been forgotten in the school warehouse, and, yet, still working! In order to show the new instruments, some new cupboards too, lying in several school labs, have been restored since then.

Lately, the show room has been enlarged and enriched thanks to a series of ancient books, some of them dating back to the end of 1700s, among which there is one, dated 1780, whose title is Il Nuovo Plico d’ogni sorta di tintura. Moreover there are some chemistry books in French from 1860, The Encyclopedia of Chemistry, published by Selmi in 1868, and Galileo Galilei’s Opera Omnia from 1929/1939.

Other textile and dyeing handbooks dated from 1897 to 1912, with some fabric items, have been put into two chest of drawers, one crystal windows and into the cupboard for textile tools.

The last section of the museum is for mineral stones: here you can admire objects coming from all over Italy and from abroad as well; moreover it is accompanied by a collection of photos referring to old Tuscany mines.