Why prints break in transit

Framed prints almost never fail because a courier was careless. They fail because the glass flexed, because the print shifted inside the frame, or because the corners took a knock the box absorbed badly. All three are preventable with materials that cost very little. The anxious assumption is that shipping is a lottery. It is not. It is a packing problem.

The single most common error is leaving a print loose against the glass. In a warm van or a cold hold, glass and paper expand at different rates, and any vibration turns the gap into abrasion. If the print is already framed, the fix is simple. A sheet of acid-free paper or a clean foam board cut to the frame's inner size, laid against the glass, removes the contact entirely.

Step by step for a framed print

Start with tape on the glass. Run masking tape across the surface in a grid, roughly 10 cm apart. If the glass does break, the tape holds the fragments together instead of letting them score the print. Then cap all four corners with foam or cardboard corner protectors, since corners are where boxes take impacts.

Wrap the frame in a blanket layer of bubble wrap, at least two full turns, and secure it so it cannot unwind. Choose a double-wall cardboard box with 5 cm of clearance on every side, fill that gap with crumpled paper or foam, and shake the sealed box gently. If anything moves, add filling. A box that rattles is a box that fails.

The same discipline applies when you order a framed poster edition or any framed work on paper. Flat is always better than on edge for glass, even though carriers sometimes prefer otherwise. Mark the box fragile on at least two faces, but treat the marking as a courtesy rather than protection.

Canvas and unframed paper

Canvas has no glass, which removes the worst failure mode, but it introduces another. A stretched canvas can be punctured or dented face-first against a hard object. Ship it in a box sized so the face cannot touch a wall of the box, with a sheet of cardboard or foam standing off the surface. For larger pieces, rolling around a wide tube and shipping in a crush-resistant tube is safer than forcing a stretched piece into an oversized box.

Unframed paper prints are the easiest case. Sandwich the print between two rigid boards slightly larger than the sheet, tape the sandwich closed on all edges so nothing can slide, and slip the whole thing into a padded mailer or small box. Keep it flat throughout. Rolled tubes are acceptable only for prints that tolerate curl, and even then the tube should be wide enough that the paper is not asked to remember a tight curve.