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

1. “Things taste better in small houses,”quote attributed to Queen Victoria – it’s true

2. Space is relative. A clear patch of deck = a ballroom, once you have achieved the proper frame of reference

3. Sunsets are the best entertainment, especially the summer replacements

4. You can brush your teeth with 3 tablespoons of water, or none

5. Most raw fruits and vegetables don’t need refrigeration

6. The same folks who ruthlessly cut you off on the highway in their BMW’s will jump to assist if you need help docking; it’s a different culture

7. A Kindle is a necessity

8. Small paintings make big statements

9. Just because you can buy a huge yacht and, literally and legally, drive it away (or into) the dock with no license or training required, doesn’t mean you should.

10. The best antidote to a city job is a marina address

 Betsy Dorfman

Every once in a while, a crate will pass through our warehouse with those air-filled plastic feet, each in the shape of a torus with one flat side, such as Skid-Mates by Hardigg Cases. They come in several densities to support different loads, indicated by a color code. These “donuts” are occasionally used in lieu of skids in the art shipping industry (more often in the general shipping industry), presumably to add that extra bit of cushioning between the crate and the floor, or to create forklift access for loads shipped without pallets or custom skids.

For each plastic-footed crate that comes and goes without incident, one or more have shown up with a crushed or missing foot; sometimes more than one. An incomplete set of feet obviously makes for an unstable crate. Those aren’t much fun when they are tall, thin and six hundred pounds or more. This can be especially serious for anything that shouldn’t be tilted, much less rocked back and forth throughout its transit. For this reason, I like to keep a few different types of donuts around the crate shop. When a crate passes through with such a problem, I simply slap a new one on wherever it is needed.

That said, I am of the opinion that plastic donuts have no place in custom art crating. By “custom” I mean crates that you design and build to unique specifications; as opposed to prefab crates and pallets for, say, a beer bottling plant. Any crate that doesn’t pack an artwork sufficiently on the inside is in trouble before it’s built, and needs to go back to the drawing board. Why not design an adequate crate and then add a little extra cushion to the outside? Because that can easily lead to taking the donuts into consideration when designing the interior packing in a crunch. Such a thing might never occur to you or me, but somebody out there is doing it right now because they are on a budget and in a hurry. If your custom art crate needs donuts under it, you’re doing it wrong. There are better ways to give your shipment multiple and separate levels of cushioning.

But donuts are not merely unnecessary on a good art crate. There is a reason or two not to use them. As I mentioned before, they come with different load strengths so that you can take the crate’s weight into account when balancing the sturdiness needed with a bit of cushioning. But what if your crate with well-balanced donuts is dropped on one edge or corner, temporarily putting all of the weight on fewer donuts? Or what if another company’s crate is stacked on top of yours? Or two more? It would seem that the feet of higher densities would be the safe bet in terms of avoiding donut failure, but that would often as not eliminate most of the cushioning for which you have chosen to use them in the first place. However unlikely the scenarios above might sound, the fact remains that I see at least one of a set crushed more often than not.

Even when none of the donuts are damaged and they are doing their intended job, the exterior cushioning they provide can cause a tall and heavy crate to feel unsteady before any of the feet leave the floor. If a transport is not properly loaded with this in mind, it leaves the crate free for all kinds of motion during transit. Hollow feet designed for specific load ranges can always be exposed to unexpected and adverse conditions during shipping.

Finally there is the potential for damage of a more violent kind. In contests with forklifts, donuts always lose. Wooden skids can also be knocked off by wayward forks, but only if the crate is too heavy to be pushed away by the forks (or it is pinned in place by something like a wall), and if the skid is also broadsided by the shock. But in most cases wood skids are placed perpendicular to logical forklift access; giving a full-length beam of solid wood nowhere to go. So the shearing of a properly assembled wood skid is relatively uncommon. Custom skids also look better, as they can be designed as a solid, seamless part of the crate rather than just being pinned on as an afterthought.

In my opinion, donuts go with coffee – not fine art shipping.

You may have seen recent news coverage of yacht owners abandoning their boats in these recessionary times, causing a mess for marinas and law enforcement officers who have to deal with the cost to dispose of these in an environmentally friendly way.

Well, less heralded, it’s happening to us here in our fine art storage facility. Owners of high end paintings and sculptures are abandoning these possessions in droves, rather than continue to pay storage fees.

As one collector put it in a recent phone call:

“To continue to pay $125 a month when the artwork is only worth $50,000 – well, you do the math, it just isn’t a good investment anymore. Do whatever you want with the thing, to me at this point it’s just a heartbreak on canvas. And don’t call me anymore!”

Reached for comment, marina owner Fred “Tug” Cruiser, was sympathetic:

“I hear you, believe me. At least yours don’t leak oil. Oh, they do? Never thought of that. Here we have the owners, some of them, deliberately scuttling the boats themselves. Insurance company raises them up to find neat holes drilled in the side etcetera. My advice,  if you’re going to scuttle one of those pictures or statues, first, don’t do it in my marina and, second, don’t make nice little round holes! Get your dog to chew it or something. Have a little imagination for Christ’s sake. Geez, there goes a guy with a drill, sorry, gotta go.”

As you can imagine, there are laws on the books governing the proper disposal of artworks. You can’t just toss them in the dumpster or leave them on the shoulder of the 405 freeway on a dark night, however tempting. And you can’t sell them because, as with yachts, the market is already glutted with people trying to sell better paintings for pennies on the palette and anyway, as a storage facility, you don’t have access to the provenance. Without the provenance, even preschools won’t take them for the nap room. We tried.

As it is today, we can barely get in the front door due to a pile up of Picassos and Pollocks. In the back,  orphaned Boteros have staged a rebellion, shed their crates, and are dancing naked in the aisles. It isn’t pretty.

That’s the situation here on April 1^st, hoping for better days ahead.

Betsy Dorfman

At Fine Art Shipping we broker art shipments to or from virtually any location worldwide. And because we book frequently and often in bulk with carriers, we keep our prices competitive — sometimes less than what you would pay for the same service if you booked independently.

You:

– Save staff time and hence $$

– Fill out one form online, or send one email

– Receive an estimate reflecting the best combination of pricing and schedule to suit your needs

– Deal with one person in our office from soup to nuts

– Multi stop exhibitions also booked this simply

– Pay one invoice even for services performed in multiple locations by multiple providers

– Don’t require a staffer experienced with shipping to arrange for even complicated projects – we’ll help!

We:

 – Survey qualified carriers who serve the requested route or region

– Maintain a roster of fine art services providers worldwide, and know their track record and strong suits

– Have ongoing relationships with carriers resulting in best pricing and attentive service

– Obtain bids from subcontractors as needed

– Contact artists, studios or institutions to obtain information as needed for the estimate  

– Submit one comprehensive estimate to you detailing all aspects of a project

– Prepare all paperwork including international documents, and arrange for customs clearances   

– Contact all venues and handle all aspects of multi stop tours and exhibitions

– Maintain records of past shipments for 7 years in case proof of shipping documents are needed for tax or other purposes

So if you’re feeling a little bit broker (sorry, but who isn’t?) give us a call and see if we can’t turn “broker” into a positive concept!

Betsy Dorfman

Well known for his plays, stories and films,Alan Bennett is also, who  knew, an astute observer of art and member of the board of the National Gallery. “Untold Stories” is a series of short pieces written when Mr. Bennett was under a, thankfully incorrect, death sentence from cancer in 1997. His musings on the state of the British commonwealth and psyche are on target and rendered in vibrant and piquant style. His “take” on many of the world’s museums includes commentary on the ambiance and room tone of the spaces — how they make you feel and whether they are inviting spaces in which to encounter art . Benches or no benches? Lighting up to snuff? His opinions of the artworks, too, are fresh and entertaining and he has no trouble casting aside received wisdom when “masterpieces” don’t make the cut. You definitely want to go museum hopping with this gentleman.  

Skip ahead to the diary entries if you are mainly interested in his art critiques and observations;   but you will be missing much. Tales of his upbringing among the shop-keep aunties and conventions of ex-urban Leeds are both poignant and hilarious by turns.

Here is a link to the 2005 review by the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/oct/09/biography.features1

Betsy Dorfman

I get some variation of this phone call all too frequently:

ARTIST:   Hi, I have a crate I need to ship to London. I built it myself.

ME:           Okay, we can help with that. I will need the dimensions and weight.

ARTIST:   I got everything in one crate, if you can believe that. Eight by seven by about, oh the height has gotta be, I’m five eight so let’s say, six.

ME:          (Hopefully, but knowing better) Feet or inches?

ARTIST:  (Proudly) Feet. It’s in my garage. You’ll need a lift gate. Wait, you thought I was five inches tall?

ME:          What is the size of the largest work in the crate. These are paintings?

ARTIST:  There’s a couple of big ones, maybe four, then a whole bunch of medium and little ones that I stacked double high and double wide. Kind of up on a shelf thing on the inside. Sectioned. That way it could all go in one crate.  (Pause) Hello?

ME:      Sorry I’m just…is there any way you can cut this thing in half?

FADE OUT

Okay, some actual useful information:

HEIGHT

Many airlines have height cutoffs of 60-63″, depending upon the actual equipment flown. Above that height you will need to book on a freighter, which gives you fewer flights to choose from and is often more expensive. You typically need an advance booking on a freighter, and such freight can wait in line sometimes for days until space is available.  Sometimes you can’t avoid this, with a large installation piece or bronze, but where it can be avoided it should be.  

WEIGHT/HANDLING

Oversize crates cost more at every stage of shipping and handling, and if very heavy can be dangerous to move as well. They are more likely to be fork lifted rather than hand carried or dollied.

FREIGHT COST

With inventories of mixed sizes it is nearly always cost effective to fabricate multiple crates with contents grouped by size.  It is the overall volume that determines freight cost, and splitting into multiple crates often saves on final volume. 

ACCESS: THE END GAME

Also consider that the average doorway is only 30 or so inches wide. If your shipment is going to a corporate location, office building, or a downtown gallery your giganto crate may not fit through the doorway. Not every business has a dock or wide receiving doors. So now you’ve got some preparator unpacking the crate at the curb — not going to be your biggest fan once that is done.  And then what do they do with the crate? Have you seen the average gallery store room? 

DAMAGE ISSUES 

Most damage in shipping actually happens during packing and unpacking. Creating an oddly sectioned crate, which also has a high center of gravity, may not be simple to unpack. The recipient could open the wrong side or not perceive where all the works are located. We have seen examples where small works were sectioned off behind larger works, but where the separating foam or cardboard was mistaken for the wall of the crate.  Out goes the crate into the trash still holding the small works – ouch.   Always include a pack sheet detailing the crate contents, and unpacking instructions as well. Unfortunately many artist packed crates don’t have such instructions included.

 RETURN SHIPPING

If the destination can’t or won’t store your oversize crate, you may be asked to pay for storage at an offsite location or charged for a new crate to return unsold items. If you are lucky and they do store it, and, even luckier, they sell half of your artworks at the show, now you are going to have to ship that huge crate back half empty. Had you built 2 or 3 crates, chances are the returning volume could have been downsized into 1 of 2 of those.

Like most art handlers we are happy to give guidance to artists or others building crates. Call us BEFORE you build and we may be able to save you some money, or grief, or both.

Betsy Dorfman

Actually, they’re here. We’re branding these as ARTfids, our in house name for radio frequency identity tags which track the location of artworks in our care. You likely have experienced RFIDs in the guise of those pesky tags stores embed in clothing as a theft preventative.  Step out the door and through the “reader” and you trip an alarm.

Now this technology is making its way into the realm of fine art inventory systems and handling.  RFID technology is a huge improvement over bar coding as well as  visual only labeling systems.  Information from RFID tags can be scanned and uploaded directly into a computer to form an instant inventory. When pieces are deaccessioned from storage they are scanned out,  and scanned again coming off the truck at a delivery point using the handheld reader. Game, set and match.

The application for fine art is obvious: you want to know where high value items are at all times. New flat labels make this possible. RFID tags look like regular shipping labels and can be affixed to artworks quickly and simply.  Our proprietary system of ARTfids works with a handheld reader that is carried through our warehouses,  taken to job locations, and used on the trucks.   Inventories are read and verified in far less time than it takes to do manual counts, and with far greater accuracy.

And, how cool is this: unlike barcodes or human eyes,  RFID readers don’t require line of sight to the actual tag. The radio signal can be picked up from even inside closed containers. So, for example, the reader can report and verify the entire contents of a crate containing multiple pieces, without opening the crate. Walking through a loaded truck the reader can verify which items are on board, even if one is behind the other. Point it at a set of shelves where small items have been stored and it will tell you if one has been left on a high shelf out of sight.

RFID technology has obvious applications for institutions, collectors, and homeowners wanting peace of mind as to the location of their valuables. We’ll have a follow up post on a major Los Angeles art theft that might have been prevented had an RFID detection system been in place.

In our setting, i.e. the professional fine arts and antiques storage facility, the upgrade to RFID has been a major improvement. We’re very excited about this technology and invite questions from customers and the general public on this grand new tool for inventory and tracking of fine art.

We’ll also show you some photos of the tags and the system in use in later posts.

Betsy Dorfman

Nice review in the LA Times today of the Tomory Dodge show at Acme Gallery:

 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/02/tomory-dodge-re.html 

Acme is a long time customer of Fine Art Shipping;  we sort of grew up together. Both enterprises started in small scrappy places in Santa Monica at about the same time, outgrew those, and moved on to bigger and better installations – pun intended. There truly is a parallel universe thing going on here, as Acme added more space and renovated their gallery just as we were outfitting our third warehouse with climate control –both suffering the vagaries of city planning and construction induced migraines.

Our art handlers who delivered the Tomory Dodge pieces to the show say the gallery looks grand;  those of us stuck in the office will have to get unstuck one of these days and go congratulate Bob and Randy and Dean. The show is up through March 14th along with paintings by Michael Norton — don’t miss!  http://www.acmelosangeles.com/current/

Betsy Dorfman

Many self storage facilities boast in their advertising and signage that they offer “climate controlled” storage. Chances are, they don’t. As they tilt towards full disclosure, this is amended  to “air conditioned” or “temperature controlled,” which is closer to the truth. For those needing to store sensitive or high value goods, understanding this terminology is crucial to selecting the appropriate storage venue.

At FINE ART SHIPPING, like many fine art handlers, we offer a mix of storage options including museum standard climate control.

In our case this means a facility:

 – heated and cooled as needed 24/7 to maintain a temperature range of 68-72 degrees Fahrenheit year round

–  relative humidity maintained between 45-55 percent year round

–  sufficient equipment to provide redundancy should a system experience failure

–  internet display monitored from on or offsite with snapshot printouts of readings as needed

–  filtering “clean air” technology to remove impurities from circulating air

When comparing rates among “climate controlled” services it is important to have the facility in question provide their climate specifications. They may or may not meet museum, or your, standards. An “air conditioned” facility may air condition to a point above or below the ideal for paintings.

Air conditioning, as delicious as it is, is for people; full climate control with monitored air balance is needed for correct storage of old master and other sensitive paintings and commodities.

Many  warehouses such as ourselves offering true climate controlled storage also provide  a range of companion services such as crating, inventory management, condition reporting,  viewing rooms, shipping, and insurance.  Asking for references is a good idea; if museums store at the facility you are considering it is likely the real deal.

Betsy Dorfman

FINE ART SHIPPING