Our Fichet Butterfly Safe Deposit Box Doors & Locks come from the old Banque Fédérale client vault in Place St-François 15 in Lausanne. When the bank was bought back by UBS in 1945, the entire client vault was moved to the UBS building on the other side of the street. Save for 5 doors which had two client keys, each client safe came with one key and one key only. The 5 extra copies were rendered useless when the safe deposit box installation was moved in October 1946 (picture).

The Federal Bank had two underground floors, with the first level occupied by the bank's own vault to store banknotes, gold and documents. The second underground floor had the client safe deposit boxes (these are the ones we sell!). Clients could come and retrieve the contents of the safe with their own client key and a banker. They were then led in the adjoining space where several private cabinets were available for them to inspect their box's contents in privacy. [Plan en coupe - Plan Niveaux -1 & -2]