How to Pack Paintings and Artwork

Fragile and valuable: Gilt-Framed Impressionist Oil on Canvas

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"There are some things you can throw in any old box, and some things you can't." - anon.

 intro

Packing a valuable painting in a compact yet safe manner AND in the least possible amount of time is a complex and sometimes intimidating task.

In the early days of the gallery, when we shipped very little, it wasn't unusual to spend the best part of the day making sure the package protected the work properly.

Before we had the PackMeister software we had to design each container -and that took a lot of time. When we started selling over the web, it took up so much time, I think we spent more time packing than we did doing anything else.

Our first attempts at a system involved designing Styrofoam sheet inner-pack layouts in CorelDraw! and cutting out the Styrofoam pieces from the corel patterns. We'd build up the inner pack with cardboard, styro, glue and tape until we ended up with the painting encased in a laminated Styrofoam block. Then we'd measure the encased painting and skin it with a custom made box.


These days, using PackMeister and engineering the inner using our cardboard sandwich suspension method, we can pack an average gilt framed painting in about an hour.

Using this method, shipping costs are minimized.
As our customized packages are as small as possible & because we know the finished box dimensions before we pack, the DIM weight freight charges can be calculated correctly, avoiding those dreaded billing adjustments from the carriers.