FINE ART SHIPPING welcomes a granddaughter!!  

Emery Dorfman, born July 11 in Seattle WA

  As you can see, the packaging for this product has been designed with  great attention to safety, style, and utility for re-use. The most vulnerable points of the object are wrapped in suitably soft and archival material, then further bundled into an appropriate shape to  secure the item within the selected vehicle of conveyance. Where appropriate, additional measures have been taken to mitigate environmental exposures, particularly in the top or “head” region.

As is recommended, a minimum of  2″ of foam padding is employed  at the sides, top, and bottom of the enclosure to further protect the shipment in transit. Also included but not seen, certain moisture barrier strategies have been incorporated into the interior packaging where prudent, and based on long established guidelines for care of  such commodities.

Further updates will follow as the shipment is expected to increase in size and weight over time.

Betsy Dorfman

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

Recent news reports have detailed the upcoming sale of artworks from the Michael Crichton collection, currently on display at Christie’s in London. The paintings to be sold include a seminal work from the Jasper Johns “Flag” series, as well as works by Picasso, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg . Old friends all.

FINE ART SHIPPING has moved, installed, shipped and stored many of these works over the past decade-plus for the Crichton family. Packing and crating these recent few to send off for display in London was an exercise in nostalgia to be sure. We have softpacked the Johns for Mr. Crichton to carry on an airplane, installed it at residences in New York and Los Angeles, and each time we handled it was a thrill. The office emptied out, art handlers mysteriously appeared as the crate was about to be opened — there are artworks which claim their own audiences, and this is one.

On September 11, 2001 our Los Angeles based crew was packing art at the Crichton residence in upstate New York, some 90 miles from ground zero. We were immediately invited to stay in the home for several days, allowing us to give our hotel rooms to our NY based crew, who were unable in those early days and hours to return to the city. So this goes beyond a business relationship, to what has been a partnership of care and concern for this art over many years and circumstances.
Following the current exhibition at Christie’s the artworks go on sale in New York in May. To the new owners we can only say: may the vibes, all good, be with you.

Betsy Dorfman

FINE ART SHIPPING was recently privileged to provide packing and crating services for the ART in Embassies program, which exhibits works of American artists in the public rooms of embassy residences around the world. Yes, Virginia, a government program that actually and directly supports the arts, and has done so since its inception in 1964. Way to go, State Department!

Artworks are loaned by artists, corporations, museums and private collectors, and the AEIP pays the costs of packing and shipping to the destination city. Further information on the program is available at : http://aiep.state.gov/index.cfm

The site also supplies guidelines for artists interested in submitting art to their Registry. For students and other art hungry travelers, the website contains a listing of what works are currently on exhibit in which cities, together with artist statements and details of the pieces on view. This is a great way to support American artists and to beat the lines and entrance fees encountered at so many better known exhibition venues.

Betsy Dorfman

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

In the not too distant past our customer service folks, with degrees in things like medieval literature and art history, were forced to rely on various musty charts, formulas,  incantations and dart boards in order to produce crating cost projections. Sometimes reality obliged and we came close; sometimes not. On average, we weren’t. But with the arrival of  crate wizard Chris Barber, all we have to do is send an email and wait for his reply. Here’s more from Chris on the nuts and bolts of his creation:

Depending on how comfortable you are with creating and managing a partially automated system, a custom estimate and cut-list program can be a ridiculous time saver for your crating department. My “crating engine” uses mostly simple math functions in a simple database application. With it, I can estimate the cost and dimensions of a crate and have a formatted cut list ready to print for the craters in as little as fifteen seconds. Unusual crating circumstances only require a couple minutes of data entry before the results can be sent to customer service representatives or printed for execution. The same artwork specs and basic packing approach are automatically forwarded into several crate shell styles simultaneously, from slat crates to our highest-level travel crates. Every square inch of building material is automatically added up and priced, both for estimates and for the actual price of the built crate.

But whether you have your own crating program, or whether you do all of your math with pencil and paper, the big unknown for crating estimates is labor. Any given builder will have good days and bad days. Averaging their past performance won’t always give a perfect estimate, but it will take their history into account and mitigate guesswork based on misleading examples. Naturally, the more examples of past performance you record, the more likely you are to approach a good reliable mean.

The other sticking point in estimating labor is the duration/volume ratio. For obvious reasons, this ratio is not a straight line, but a curve. The smaller the cubic footage of any style of crate, the more minutes it will take to build per cubic foot. Likewise, the same curve levels off to nearly flat in the upper size range. I’ve plotted these curves for my lead crater so that I can make a reliable prediction of his performance on any style of crate, regardless of the size job. Even if you do everything else in your head, an accurate time curve is an elegant alternative to guesswork. Of course, this isn’t limited to crating. It can be applied to any production task with a similarly predictable set of actions. Here’s how to make your own:

Step 1. The first thing you will need is the raw data. Start recording exactly how long it takes you or your staff to build crates. Start a separate log for each crater, and each style of crate that crater produces. Every log should include a series for minutes and a series for cubic feet. Then make a third series, dividing minutes by cubic feet. I put these series in columns; so if cell A3 = minutes, and cell B3 = cubic feet, cell C3 = A3/B3. You will only use the second and third columns in the next step – cubic feet & minutes/cubic foot. Here’s an example log for “B-crates” with two hypothetical craters, one a faster builder than the other:

Soon you should have enough data in those series to get reasonable estimates. The data collection is an ongoing process, however, and your logs should be updated regularly. Older numbers could be dropped eventually to account for your crater’s growing experience and speed, but the aim is to collect as much information on each builder as possible. This is not to spy on your crew. It is to accurately predict the time it will likely take this person or that to build the next crate.

There are two ways you can process your database into functional labor estimate curves. First I’ll show the quick way, and then I’ll explain what these numbers mean by showing the chart method.

Step 2a. Find the “power trendline” of each crating log you have made, and multiply it by the estimated cubic feet. I’ll explain what the power trendline is in some depth below, but for now you can just treat it like a magic spell. If you aren’t a math geek and don’t care how, why or whether this really works, you can stop reading at the end of this step.

The fastest and most efficient way to process a given crater’s average curve on a given style of crate can be done in five math functions, and will fit on a spreadsheet the size of a postage stamp.

cell A1: =[length]*[width]*[height]*1/1728 [estimated cubic feet]

cell A2: =EXP(INDEX(LINEST(LN(y),LN(x),,),1,2)) [coefficient A]

cell A3: =INDEX(LINEST(LN(y),LN(x),,),1) [coefficient b]

cell A4: =A*(x^(b)) [trendline equation]

cell A5: =[cell 1]*[cell 4]*1/60 [labor estimate]

A1) The first cell should simply display the cubic footage of the crate being estimated. The least fussy way is to link this function to three blank cells somewhere else where you enter the crate’s L, W, & H. Those same three blank cells can be linked to every curve you make (since you need a separate curve for each crater on each style of crate).

A2) The second cell should return the value of A to be used in the equation in cell 4. This cell should contain the exact function shown, but in place of x, link to the whole cubic feet series in your crater’s log (B3:B14, to use the slower crater shown above as an example). Likewise, y must be linked to the whole series of data in the minutes/cubic foot column of your crater’s log (In this example; C3:C14).

A3) The third cell should return the value of b for the equation in cell 4. Treat series variables x & y the same way here as you did in cell 2.

A4) The forth cell should contain the function shown, but replacing x, A, b with the results of cells 1-3 respectively. Caution: in this equation, x refers only to the cubic footage of the crate being estimated. It is not the same variable as in cells 2 & 3.

A5) The fifth cell is the product of the values returned in cell 1 and cell 4, then divided by 60.

You can use these five steps to bypass the charting step described below and get your trendline equations straight from your database. But the chart actually shows what these numbers mean, and I prefer to see graphic representations of the curves anyway.

Step 2b. If the step described above seems too cryptic, the numbers involved can be more readily understood by graphing them. The program I use allows me to insert a visual chart into my spreadsheet, define the x & y parameters and link them to the two relevant series of data. This is pretty basic, and I’m sure that it’s a universal feature in spreadsheet applications. The type of graph you want is an x-y scatter chart. Your chart’s values are simply: x = cubic feet, and y = minutes/cubic foot. Once your graph is linked to those two series, you will see points plotted in the field – each point representing the crater’s performance on a specific crate.

The more information you have (and the more consistent your crater is), the more it should suggest the hint of a curve starting in the top left corner and ending in the bottom right. Now you can give the graph a trendline. The trendline extrapolates an average curve from your unwieldy cloud of points, in a visible line. You may need to choose from several types of trendline. I prefer what my application calls the “power” type, which appears to produce the most realistic curve, leveling off dramatically as it approaches zero on each axis. The “exponential” and “logarithmic” types both trace the trendline right off the chart at each end, and there’s no way a large crate will ever take negative minutes to build. Nor will a small crate ever have negative dimensions. The “linear” type overrides the curve that I believe is there. The “moving average” type defeats our purpose entirely. The “polynomial” type creates a dip in the middle ground that doesn’t make sense to me. Even if I wanted to address the handling logistics of larger crates, this potential issue is completely unrelated to the polynomial equation.

As you can see above, there is less data from the faster builder, and the blue curve is barely visible. This makes the blue trendline less reliable in the extreme size ranges; particularly the smaller sizes. This problem can be addressed quickly by giving that crater a very small crate to build and a very large one. Getting just a few points plotted past the margins of that crating history will give the blue trendline a wider range of accurate predictions.

Step 2c. Once you have your trendline plotted, tell your graph to show the trendline’s equation (which is hidden by default). Each trendline is described by a math equation reflecting the moving average of your plotted data. The power trendline equation should look like this:

y = Ax^b

The values of x and y are still cubic feet & minutes per cubic foot respectively, as the chart suggests. The coefficients “A” and “b” come directly from the trendline, which in turn is a biased average of the data your chart illustrates.

Step 2d. Now here’s the nice part: Your trendline equation can be recuperated back into the spreadsheet for the purpose of estimating labor. Once you estimate the cubic footage of your prospective crate, you can simply multiply it by the trendline to get the most accurate possible labor estimate for any given crater. The spreadsheet function for this looks a little tricky, but here it is using the same variables, A & b, as my example of the trendline equation above:

=A*(x^(b))

So if your trendline shows the equation: y = 35.956x^-0.789

…the spreadsheet cell representing it should say: =35.956*(x^(-0.789)).

If your trendline shows the equation: y = 5.5678x^-0.2912

…the spreadsheet cell representing it should say: =5.5678*(x^(-0.2912)).

Note that to make either of these examples functional, x must refer to the cell that displays the crate’s estimated cubic feet. The current value of x must be folded into the trendline equation before it can return a relative unit of duration/volume adjusted by the crate’s size. While the trendline equation merely displays the coefficients A & b, the spreadsheet cell as typed above will return the actual value of y — as long as x points to the cell displaying the current value of x and the function begins with the equal sign. Once you have a spreadsheet cell representing the trendline linked to the variable cubic footage cell, all you need do is multiply the two cells. Keep in mind that this will result in minutes; so if you prefer estimated hours, just divide the result by 60.

So to mentally separate this step from the raw database illustrated above, let’s skip over (arbitrarily) to column H on our example spreadsheet.

The blue and orange numbers in this screenshot represent the faster and slower craters, like in the curve chart. The top number in each set is the cubic footage of the crate currently being estimated. This cell changes with every estimate, as it is the product of the crate’s length, width & height, divided by 1728 to convert from inches to feet. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the cell displaying orange cubic footage is in position H4 on the spreadsheet. The next cell down, H5, is the trendline equation for that crater, with the current cubic footage plugged into it. So in place of “x” in =A*(x^(b)), the function says H4. And in place of “A” and “b”, the function shows the actual trendline coefficients. In this case what I actually typed into cell H5 is: =70.254*(H4^(-0.656)). Refer to the orange trendline on the chart to see how I got A and b. This is a functional version of the trendline equation, responding automatically to the cubic footage displayed above it. If the cubic footage dropped, the result displayed in cell H5 would rise appropriately for the crater in question. The next cell down, H6, is the product of the first two cells, divided by 60 to convert from minutes to hours. This is the estimated hours it will likely take that crater to build that style of crate at that particular size.

Step 3. Update and fine-tune your logs. Some spikes may occur that throw the whole curve out of whack. They are usually in the negative direction – like when a crater made a big mistake and spent a lot of extra time correcting it. I toss the worst spikes. I would rather take the hit when random problems happen than let them affect every estimate. Such large spikes are very rare, and I’ve only eliminated about four crates from my whole database for that reason.

Packing estimates: Of course, packing a crate involves many more variables than building it, so you should keep building time and packing time separate in your database, charts and equations. I don’t even use packing curves myself. I use a flat time for each type of flatwork, sometimes adjusted a little for size, and estimate all dimensional items in my head.

There are many different ways you can approach the problem of labor in estimates, depending on how tight you want your estimates to be. Plotting curves is admittedly a bit anal, but quite easy to set up. And it only improves over time as you add more information.

-Chris Barber

Carole Choucair Oueijan, Layaleena, 48 x 72, smalti, 24 karat gold smalti, granite, marble, onyx, crystallino, mother of pearl, fresh-water pearl, hematite, coral, jade, quartz

I always crate artworks from the inside-out; at least in my bean, in the design stage. But the actual building can vary. Sometimes it can proceed in any order, and sometimes the crate must be built before the art is approached. It depends on whether the artwork is packaged in soft materials separate from the crate, or whether it must be built directly into the crate with a cushioned wood structure. When it’s the former, I occasionally prefer to pack the art before the crate is started. This is hardly necessary, but it can save a little desk time when dealing with a number of irregular shapes that aren’t so irregular that they require much planning ahead.

This was one of those jobs that fell into that little gray area. It just made more sense to figure out how large the package would be by packing it. The piece was composed of twenty-odd irregular sections of mosaic of variable thickness. It would happily ride flat in a stack of foam-welled trays. With such a simple packing approach, it was more efficient to sort the elements by relative size and shape in “real time,” as it was being loaded onto trays. I started with a rough guideline of 36″ x 24″ trays, and from that starting point my crater found that he could fit all elements onto 13 trays at 32″ x 24″. I’m starting to make it sound more complicated than it was. Before I knew it, the trays were packed and I had a nice boxy package to measure for the crate.

Our thanks to Carole Choucair Oueijan for her permission to include images of her artwork. Layaleena, an Arabic/Lebanese word for “Splendor Nights”, is a commission piece installed in a home in Greece. In this scene the goal was to reflect the magnificence of the Lebanese nights and lifestyle of the past. Layaleena is made out of 21 pieces and took 10 months to complete.

-Chris

One of the distinct joys of our business is the opportunity to see amazing cultural and historical artifacts and objects close up. With no plexi case or velvet rope intervening. Sometimes, we get to hold history in our hands, as we did with the air rifle that was authenticated to the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Or the World War II D-Day planning map, personal property of General Omar Bradley, complete with his hand drawn renderings and notations. And the inventory of signed first editions by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

Most recently FINE ART SHIPPING was privileged to crate an exhibition of Miles Davis memorabilia for the Musee de la Musique/ Cite de la Musique in Paris. The show, entitled “We Want Miles!” opens Oct 16^th,  in case you are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Among the items we packed for the exhibition were stage costumes, sheet music, original paintings by Miles, and, most notably, three of his trumpets. Of these the “trumpet rouge” or red trumpet, was the instant show stopper. The photos shown here give just an idea of the beauty and craftsmanship of this instrument, which, beyond its value and history, is itself a work of art.

Although “red trumpet” arrived to us in its case, the lender generously allowed us to hold the instrument and manipulate the keys to feel the “action.” Wearing gloves, needless to say. For those of us who have played garden variety instruments and have some basis of comparison, we soon realized we had none, not to a custom instrument of this caliber. Crafted by Martin to Miles’ personal specifications, including the silky yet precise play of those keys, the “cool” was transporting. We Want Miles!

We’re hoping Miles would have dug the crate that we made for his trumpets; they were shipped in their original cases, each case slipped into a custom drop front foam core box within the crate. Hopefully, doing our little bit; honoring craft with craft. And, of course, we painted the crate RED!

Betsy Dorfman

Painted crates enjoy a couple of benefits besides a modest aesthetic bump. Any given shipment of them is instantly recognizable in large warehouses of unrelated crates and pallets. Larger museums tend to have their own proprietary color, and for the purposes of this you would have to ask your friendly neighborhood registrar. But I imagine that one benefit is revealing at a glance which stored crates were commissioned by the museum and which may belong to some one else. Likewise when the crates travel in large exhibitions.

Last but not least, there is a technical element. The crates shown here are covered with a coat of primer, three coats of paint and two coats of clear lacquer. This adds up to a bit of a moisture barrier. Should the crates fall into the ocean, the MDO walls will do most of the work in keeping the contents dry for a spell, but the paint helps slow down serious damage to the solid pine battens and subsequent seepage at the corners. In less catastrophic conditions however – say, a heavy rain – the water won’t get past the paint and Neoprene lid gasket.

Here is a snapshot of the same crates recently spotted in the wild, along with one from another company in the same shipment. Labels and documentation accompany all such shipments, but there is never any question where each of these crates will eventually be returned.

-Chris

Today we crated an antique object so dripping with inherent vice that I wanted to just give it a good shake and ship whatever remained in hand. It was a lacy assemblage of stressed wood with flaking paint and gold leaf, forming some kind of elaborate staff.

I thought that only wizards had these, and I must say; any wizard would be proud to lean ponderously on such a grand walking stick. I was disappointed to be informed that it was not, in all likelihood, the former property of any such character; not the least because it debunked my theory that it was the gradual (and sad) fading of magic that was causing the many unsecured parts to slowly lose their unlikely relative positions and settle into a more natural relationship with gravity.

I do admire a clever bit of woodworking, and in all fairness, it isn’t the staff’s fault that it was never meant to lie prone like a saucy odalisque; much less freighted that way. But long story short, this thing was screaming to be shipped upright – not only for the fragility of its overall construction and distribution of weight, but also for the specific joins used in assembling some of the wooden nuggets.

That some of the said nuggets were quite loose is an understatement. They were ready to leap away from the piece like rats riding the explosion of a sinking ship’s boiler room. But for a variety of reasons, shipping upright was no more an option than not shipping it at all; the latter being a suggestion I slipped anonymously under the general manager’s door this morning before tip-toeing away.

When that plan didn’t work, I was forced to ship the piece in a horizontal attitude. The point of all this is that sometimes you have to just do what you can to make sure the thing is as safe as possible within the tight budget. So here’s what we did:

A cavity pack was pointless, as we would have had to float so many little parts and still catch the more solid areas at all of the correct angels in a Swiss cheese version of (a negative image of) the piece. So vertical guillotines it would be. The staff’s lateral, vertical and axial movement was eliminated by guillotines along the shaft.

One more guillotine on the crown’s widest point took much of the crown’s weight, and also eliminated any possibility of spinning in place thanks to the hexagonal tier.

Tall, tapered bumpers reached up from below to take the weight of each successive tier in the crown.

Belts and straps of Tyvek held the loosest pieces in place while holding the tiers down against their bumpers.

Finally, a safety bumper of softer foam was placed ½” away from the tip of the staff, just in case several other axial stoppers failed.

I still wouldn’t drop this crate from the top of a tall thing, but I can strap it to  a unicorn and wave goodbye to it with confidence.

-Chris