Or, tales of the gravy boat …

Our company name is helpful insofar as it is descriptive: Fine Art Shipping – doesn’t leave much doubt. But the truth is we ship, and store, a wide variety of objects, not just art. And not all the art is “fine” art. The not so secret secret is that most fine art handlers will pack and ship a wide variety of goods including art, antiques, household furnishings, architectural models, musical instruments and just about anything else requiring expert and careful handling. For example, your Thanksgiving platter and gravy boat. The one grandma expects to see every year….

In some ways the community of art handlers has replaced what used to be a commonplace: the full service storage facility. In our era of self storage and van line storages using wood vaults, the idea of a warehouse where goods are commonly held and curated by the staff has largely disappeared from view. But this is precisely what we do. And not just for artworks, although this is the heart of our business. If it’s fragile, temperature sensitive, special in any way, or just needs to be properly stored under secure, clean & organized conditions– this is what we do.

So you can store your “stuff” (virtually anything except toxic substances or live plants and animals) in a full service facility such as ours for a reasonable fee. You’ll receive a computerized photo inventory from which you can select items to be delivered or shipped virtually anywhere. Similarly, we can pick up or receive incoming shipments for your account, inspect, assemble as needed, and place into storage while you’re busy having your life somewhere else – not running to the self storage.

And you won’t be paying a three hour minimum for a van line dude to forklift down your wood vault, crowbar it open, and paw through your entire stack of possessions to try and locate one box. You know the box: the one with your turkey platter and gravy boat that you’re going to need real soon… Which you hope they didn’t put at the bottom of the pile.

Oh, and did you need insurance on that?

Over the years we have had a couple of instances where artworks or valuable objects were mistakenly left in crates or packages and almost, or actually, discarded. I hasten to say these were not containers that we had packed, but items received by us packed by other customers or shippers. In one case a work on paper was sandwiched by the sender between cardboard sheets with no labeling on that package whatsoever. Inside and resting against the back of the crate it was readily mistaken for…well, a piece of cardboard. And recently when preparing to discard boxes returned from a jobsite we found a number of expensive glassware items and a silver tray which the customer’s staff overlooked when unpacking. Oops.

Whether hiring a professional company or doing it yourself, all containers with multiple contents should be accompanied by a packing list or pack list. Sometimes this is pouched on the outside of the container, but for maximum safety we like to put a copy inside the package. With crates we often glue them inside the top. With a pack list, the person unpacking knows exactly what to look for within the box. They can check off pieces as they unpack and make sure that all items are accounted for before discarding the package.

In addition, all packages within a box or crate should carry a clear label to distinguish between packed items and incidental packing materials. We often write “art inside!!” on portfolios as well as label them with the artist and title of the contents. A few seconds with a red marker can literally save a small or thinly wrapped artwork from accidental destruction or loss. Your packages should not be mysterious.

And then there are the “non art” components which often accompany shipments. Artists are notorious for this. They will send us a lovely crate with carefully packed and labeled art within, but fail to alert us to look for that little bag of screws, or that wood cleat they tucked up in the northwest corner which they hope we didn’t think was part of the crate, or the little packet of folded mending material that is hugely important to the installation… Once again common sense dictates that anything which needs to be found needs to be findable. And all items including incidentals need to appear on pack lists. Otherwise we may not recognize what is integral and what is not. The folded material in one artist’s crate might be something leftover that they used to fill negative space, or it might be critical to the artwork. We should not have to guess.

At our warehouses, we have a standard rule that all boxes are broken down fully and all accompanying “trash” paper, bubble wrap, or plastic etc. is searched again to make sure no objects are commingled in the packing. With crates, interior foam and loose spacing or lining materials are fully removed so that the crate is inspected right down to the wood before it is marked as empty. Every art handler has a story of the “empty” crate that wasn’t. Packing lists may not entirely solve this problem, but they help. After all the most basic goal of shipping is to have the receiver, not the dumpster, receive what the shipper shipped.

 Betsy Dorfman