Shipped worldwide: framing for galleries, museums, and collectors anywhere

About a quarter of the framed work that leaves our shop is going outside Chicago. Some of it stays in the United States. Some of it crosses an ocean. We have shipped finished pieces to galleries in Lagos, collectors in London, museums in Tokyo, and apartment walls in Seoul. The framing decisions we make on Clybourn travel the same way the artwork does, which is to say carefully. Worldwide shipping is not a different service we offer in addition to the framing. It is the framing extending across distance.

What changes when the destination is overseas

The first thing that changes is the crate. A local Chicago delivery uses a custom foam-lined crate built that morning. An overseas shipment uses an ISPM-15 certified hardwood crate, sealed against humidity, fitted with shock indicators, and labeled with handling instructions in multiple languages. The piece inside the crate is wrapped in archival materials that are designed to withstand temperature and humidity changes during transit. A canvas going from a 50% humidity workshop in Chicago to a 90% humidity museum in Lagos can move enough on its stretchers to crack the paint if it is not packed for the journey. The crate is the first defense. The wrapping is the second. The third is the shipping route, which we book through art-handling specialists who treat the freight differently from the way a parcel service would.

The second thing that changes is the paperwork. Customs documentation for fine art is its own specialty. Each piece going overseas needs an itemized declaration that includes the artist's name, the title of the work, the medium, the dimensions, the value, and a photograph of the framed piece. Some destinations require a certificate of origin. Some require additional documentation if the artist is alive and the work crosses certain value thresholds. We prepare all of it in our shop before the crate leaves the workshop. A piece held up in customs because of incomplete paperwork can spend weeks in a warehouse with no climate control, which undoes everything the crate was built for.

Same care, different distance

The principle behind worldwide shipping is the same principle behind a local Chicago delivery. The piece is not done until it lands intact on the wall it was built for. The methods change because distance changes them. The care does not. A framed piece going to Lagos is built and packed with the same attention as a piece going to Logan Square. The difference is in the crate, the documentation, and the route, not in the framing.

That is how we ship a finished frame across an ocean. Meticulously. By people who treat the freight as artwork rather than cargo. With paperwork that gets the piece through customs the first time, every time, and a crate built to outlast the journey.