Transportation for Pieces of Fine Art

The summer months are a key time for collectors of fine art whether you like watercolours, oil paintings, sculptures or other pieces. This is because the summer months are when the most auctions are held throughout the country. Bidding for precious items at auctions might be an energising hobby but when you buy a large or fragile piece of fine art, it can cause a major problem – how are you going to get it home?

This is where Cube Fine Art comes in. We offer a dedicated transportation service which includes a full bespoke packing service plus the physical transportation of your item by trained and experienced staff. Whether you are taking your new piece round the corner or across the country, we can help ensure that it arrives in the best possible condition, putting your mind at ease. If you would like to find out more about our transportation services or would like a quote for something you have bought, please contact us.

We Take the Security of Your Fine Art Seriously

At Cube Fine Art Services, we understand how precious your pieces of fine art are in terms of both financial value and sentimental value. We therefore take security very seriously when it comes to storing your fine art. We have a state of the art storage facility that offers your fine art protection from theft 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Firstly, the facility is surrounded by a high perimeter fence which both deters people from illegally entering the premises and provides a barrier for doing so. The facility has a twin BT Redcare intruder alarm which ensures that both our staff and the police are notified immediately if anyone tries to enter the premises. As well as the building being alarmed, individual pieces of artwork are also alarmed and monitored from our reception area. This ensures that nothing can move without us knowing about it. We have both internal and external CCTV which is monitored and recorded 24 hours a day. This ensures that we know exactly who enters and exits the premises and what they do once inside You are welcome to tour our dedicated storage facility if you wish. To find out more about our security or any of our other services, contact us today

Tips and Advice for Packing Your Own Pieces for Storage

At Cube Fine Art, we offer a specialist, bespoke packing service for your pieces of fine art. However some of our clients prefer to pack their own pieces for storage and we’re perfectly happy for you to do this. We’d like to take this opportunity to share a few tips with you for the best way of doing this:

1.       Frame it – if your piece is a canvas featuring paint, oils, pencil sketches or any other type of media, we recommend framing it instead of storing it loose or rolled. This will offer it better protection.

2.       Corner guards – to protect sharp points or protruding sections of artwork, we recommend the use of cardboard corner guards. This should help to prevent your piece from being damaged in transit.

3.       Bubblewrap – we don’t recommend the use of bubblewrap as it can cause artwork to sweat or the chemicals from the plastic can stain it, causing permanent damage.

4.       Packing peanuts – we don’t recommend the use of packing peanuts either as these can break up into small pieces which can be a nightmare to remove from nooks in sculptures and frames.

5.       Breathable fabric – this is perfect for offering your pieces an extra layer of protection without causing damage.

If you would like to find out more about how to protect your items for transit or storage or would like to know more about our bespoke packing service, please contact us.

Why Bubblewrap is Unsuitable for Packaging Paintings

Back in April we produced a blog post which advised you not to wrap your pieces of fine art in bubblewrap when transporting or putting it into storage. On the back of this post, we had lots of enquiries from customers asking us why bubblewrap is so bad when it comes to wrapping paintings so we thought we’re share the information with everyone. Bubble wrap is made from low density polyethylene plastic which is manufactured using oil and chemicals. One sheet of plastic is wrapped around a drum with holes in it. A vacuum is then applied to the plastic which sucks the plastic into the holes in the drum. Once this has happened, a second layer of polyethylene plastic is laminated over the top of the first to trap in the air which results in small, uniform bubbles - hence the appearance of bubblewrap. When bubblewrap is used on delicate materials such as canvas or porous wood, the oil and other chemicals in the plastic can begin to leach, putting them into contact with your fine artwork which may begin to absorb it. This is the main reason that we don’t recommend using bubblewrap.

The second reason is that due to the plastic construction of bubblewrap, it doesn’t allow your artwork to ‘breathe’ so can also end up trapping tiny droplets of moisture against your item. This results in water damage. We recommend using types of breathable fabric when wrapping your fine art. To find out more about how to protect your items for transit or storage, feel free to contact us.

Our Packing Service

At Cube Fine Art Services, we are specialists in the transportation and storage of pieces of fine art. What many of our customers don’t realise is that we also offer a comprehensive fine art packing service as well – whether you take advantage of our transportation service or not. Here’s what we can offer as part of our packing service:

• Initial Assessment – when you contact Cube Fine Art, we will allocate a dedicated consultant to you who will assess your exact requirements and make recommendations on how best to package your item.

• Bespoke Case Building – we will measure the item or items you require packing and build bespoke cases for them to make sure they will be protected during transportation or storage.

• Case Lining – we will line your custom built case with polystyrene for an extra layer of protection.

• Wrapping – your piece of fine art will then be carefully wrapped in breathable packaging such as Tyvek to ensure it doesn’t ‘sweat’ and cause damage. It will then be placed inside the crate.

• Sealing – the case will then be securely sealed and we will oversee its loading onto a vehicle if required.

If you would like to find out more about our packaging services or would like a quote, please contact us.

We Welcome Feedback

At Cube Fine Art, we pride ourselves on both our extensive knowledge of the transportation and storage of fine art and also on our excellent customer service levels. We welcome feedback on our range of services and on our customer care skills and would like to invite our clients to provide us with feedback. We want to hear about your individual experience with us. What you liked about our services, what you found helpful and what our customer service was like. We’d also like to know if you think our services can be improved upon and anything that we can do that would help you recommend us to friends and colleagues in the future. We’d love to hear from you so if you’d like to share your personal experiences of using Cube Fine Art, please contact us today.

Consultation is the Key

At Cube Fine Art, we understand the importance and value of your fine art, in monetary, investment and sentimental value. That is why we don’t rush in and try to sell you our services straight away. Instead we offer each of our customers, whether looking to transport or store just one item or many, a full consultation service. Our consultation service aims to determine the nature of the pieces of fine art in question and what services you require. We will discuss specific issues about how items should be packed for transportation and how they need to be stored if applicable. We will inform you of the specification of our own delivery vehicles along with our state of the art storage facility that includes a climate controlled storage section. For April, we are offering a free day’s consultation* - to take advantage of this offer, please contact us on 0800 027 2668.

*Terms & conditions apply