What has dozens of steel quills and makes a  surprisingly lovely sound as you walk toward it?   It’s an elegant steel sculpture by Italian artist and furniture designer Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), and it was my distinct pleasure as the new crating manager to pack it this week. As a recovering sculptor myself, I take particular delight in Bertoia’s lively, indeed musical, use of industrial materials and their properties.

This piece, an assortment of slender steel rods welded to a rectangular plate in a somewhat pitched “V” formation, was certainly handsome enough to look at, but the real surprise revealed itself as I stepped closer and heard the rustle of the steel rods, making a sound like brushes on a cymbal; sizzle, sizzle, sizzle… 

From a crating perspective, the fragility of the piece posed certain challenges.  The sculpture had come to us with an extant injury (one of the rods had fallen loose from the plate), and I wanted to ensure that the packing put only minimal stress on the welds.  This meant no compression – nothing on top to flex the rods.  Capturing the base was therefore the way to go, so I devised a system of padded yokes which fit together like a 3D puzzle, grasping the piece from its sturdiest point.  To keep the rods from trembling in transit, I gently bundled them together and grasped with a sliding foam collar.

Packing of complex sculpture has always been one of my favorite aspects of this job.  It offers the art enthusiast in me a chance to commune with works of sculpture in a very tactile way, and allows me to show of my own chops as a craftsman.  The little rustling Bertoia was my favorite kind of project… pretty good day at the office!

Ian Patrick for FINE ART SHIPPING

Artwork from the collection of David K. Pressman

Sunday’s New York Times magazine takes a look at the world of art theft related blogs, spotlighting one such blogger in particular who features himself as a go-between of sorts in the exchange of (often shady) communications between the bad guys and the good guys. Both of which types, he asserts, read his blog to find out what the others are up to. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06FOB-medium-t.html

As the article notes, the recent brazen thefts from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, where paintings were apparently wrenched from the wall during an ongoing security system outage, has had the blogosphere all atwitter for weeks. Not to mention the offices of art handling companies such as ourselves around the world.  A security system lapse, with no backup? No Rfid tags on paintings of that value? Not even a guy watching them?

Many hospitals today affix Rfid tags to newborns via leg bracelets or similar, and warn new parents not to stray from a designated area in the nursery zone lest alarms sound, exit doors close and lock, and gendarmes come running.  For babies, yes, but not for Matisse and Picasso? Incroyable!

I suppose there will always be ingenious theives who will find their way around whatever technologies are deployed against them, but we should at least give them a run for their money. Or I should say, for our money. Make it too easy and even the art theives turned bloggers may think again and go back into the trade.

Or maybe this is one of those tricky film plots where the good guys let the bad guys take the loot in order to trace the thieves back to their den of filched old masters, hidden in hollowed out loaves of,  but of course, french bread. Which are then recovered by Peter Sellers but left in the police van while he updates his blog, only to be, heartbreakingly, stolen from the unlocked van and and eaten by hungry college students incapable of discerning between aged canvas and charcuterie.

We wish the pros success in restoring these works to public view. And for all you art thieves who apparently spend a lot of time reading blogs like this, please know that you can drop off hot artworks at our dock any weekday by 5 PM. I’m not saying that we’re affiliated in any way with the Los Angeles Police Department Art Theft Detail, or have actually helped them solve any cases, but but let’s just say we know how to open a crate and look inside, if you catch my drift.

BetsyDorfman