Shipping Artwork

Factors To Consider Before Shipping Artwork

The shipping and handling process is crucial for ensuring you or your client receives your shipment intact. Before shipping your art pieces, you need to consider some important factors:

• What kind of artwork are you shipping?What materials did you use to create it? Did you use watercolors, oils, pastels, charcoal, or something unique? Did you create it on a stretched canvas or paper behind a glass frame? Each type of material is susceptible to different kinds of damage and needs special care when packaging and shipping.

• What size is your artwork? Small to medium-sized pieces of art don’t usually need to be shipped via freight. Parcel carriers like USPS, FedEx, and UPS can ship smaller canvases and framed art. However, larger pieces, artwork that is too fragile to be shipped via parcel, and multiple artworks being sent together are eligible for freight shipping. You’ll need to speak to a carrier or broker to determine if your artwork can be freight shipped.

• How fragile is your artwork? One thing all artworks have in common is fragility. Canvases and framed paintings can easily crack, shatter, smudge, or melt, depending on the type of materials used to create them.

• Is your artwork valuable? High-priced or iconic pieces need extra protection during delivery. If a valuable piece of art is damaged during transit, there isn’t much that can restore it completely. Valuable pieces of art can be lost during transit or even stolen!

• Are you shipping multiple artworks? If you’re shipping a volume of art pieces to a location, like a gallery or an exhibition, you may need to order multiple bookings for each piece.
• What freight carriers will ship your artwork? Some carriers will not ship fine art of any shape or form, especially original pieces, due to their extreme fragility and sentimentality. You’ll need to research what carriers will ship artwork, or you can ask a freight broker (like FreightCenter) for a list of accepting carriers.

Sit down and map out how you will ship your artwork via freight. A lot can go wrong during a freight shipment, so contingency plans are worthwhile when preplanning your shipment.

Tips for Packaging Artwork

Artwork is considered highly valued and very fragile. When it’s time to package your paintings, you must ensure the canvas or frame is well-protected. Here are some simple tips for packaging your art pieces:

1. Use glassine paper to cover every side and corner of the piece to protect it from dust and moisture. Secure the paper with acid-free artist tape to prevent breakage and puncturing of the glass during transit.
2. You can also wrap your artwork (specifically paintings) in shrink wrap, starting from the back of the artwork and wrapping it all the way around. This might be difficult with larger artwork, but it’s the best immediate protection for a piece of artwork.
3. Instead of using only bubble wrap, wrap the artwork using acid-free paper first. If you decide to use bubble wrap, use it carefully and primarily in areas that need extra shock absorption. Remember: bubble wrap shouldn’t touch paintings directly; it can imprint on the canvas and ruin the varnish.
4. Use cardboard corner protectors to prevent damage during transit. You can also double-box your artwork: Measure and cut pieces of cardboard around it and then tape it to form a box. Slip the newly formed box into another box filled with packaging material.
5. Seal all box seams with high-quality, moisture-resistant, heavy-duty tape to prevent moisture from entering and damaging your artwork. Don’t use old, worn-out boxes; they not only give a bad impression to the recipient but also fail to protect your art as well as new boxes do.
6. Glass is tough to ship safely, especially if it’s part of a framed painting. If the glass shatters, the shards will be embedded into the paint, ruining the varnish. If you must ship a frame via freight, double the padding around it and apply masking tape to glass surfaces so the glass shards stay together if they break.
7. Label the package with a “fragile” or “handle with care” label to indicate that it contains delicate artwork. Failure to do so risks potential damage to your artwork.