Moving home? Tips for taking care of your art.
Moving house is an exciting time for any family! We have some quick tips and hints on how to safely transport your artwork and how to find the perfect place to hang it in your new home.
Careful packaging of your artwork is important to ensure no damage occurs during shipment. Take care to ensure that the corners of each piece are individually protected - you can purchase foam or cardboard corners that will help provide protection. Each piece should be framed in multiple layers of bubble wrap and wrapped in plastic or tape to keep the protection in place.
It pays to make sure that all Certificates of Authenticity often found on the back of the artwork are securely secured for travel - these are important documents that attest to the artwork's provenance and should be kept securely.
Once packaged, it's worth adding Fragile stickers to each piece and label so you can remember the artist and the individual artwork after the move. It's surprising how very similar the paintings can look behind layers of bubble wrap!
On moving day, be extra careful with larger glass-framed artwork, which can be particularly fragile, or canvas box pieces. Inadvertently propping heavy objects arteagainst canvas art can cause indentations that may be difficult to remove. Avoid using any newspaper to protect the work as ink can contaminate the artwork.
While moving home can be a very busy time, it's worth taking an inventory of your art collection right now. This will help ensure you have adequate insurance to provide the coverage you need should the worst happen on moving day. It will also help you make sure the contents insurance is sufficient to meet your needs in the new home. There are specialist insurance companies that offer separate policies for artwork with a market value replacement clause which can be really important for any artwork that has had its value appreciated during the time of its ownership. When you look at your art collection as a portfolio, the overall value increases very quickly. It is always worth keeping all art gallery receipts or documentation in a safe place to prove the value of the artwork.
When we move into the house, we often find that the age and style of our new property is quite different from our old house. This can have an impact on the artwork that surrounds you - it also provides the ideal opportunity to see each piece in your collection with new eyes.
Looking at the same paintings in the same place every day can blind us to the details and beauty of a piece. It's always worth considering changing art at home - Whether you're moving house or not, a new place with different lighting day and night can quickly transform a piece.
For paper art, the assemblies should be checked for signs of damage, wear and tear. You may find that the acid in the environment has discolored the montage around the limited editions, leaving it with a yellow tint. Now might be a good time to find a reputable framer near your new home to reassemble the art and provide renewed protection to the painting.
For much older pieces, you'll also find that improvements in the technology behind glass making can provide you with much better options for protecting your art. Artglass is now available, which significantly reduces glare, but also minimizes the impact of the glass, giving a much truer reflection of the art underneath. Although Artglass is a more expensive option for more valuable pieces - both sentimentally and in terms of market value - you may find it worth investing to improve the overall finish.
Consider the pieces that work well together and the core palette in a room when deciding where to hang your art in your new home. Art can bring color and inspiration into a room with neutral colors - or provide a sense of calm in another room. The style of the artwork matches the surroundings - you can choose to hang pictures by the sea in the bathroom, for example. A dining room may be better suited for artwork, but also a representation of its character - what we choose to hang in our homes often reflects our personality, our hopes and aspirations. This is particularly true of your hallway - the first and sometimes the only space the outside world sees - what will you choose to hang here?
As always, the Rose Gallery team is available to provide support, from finding new artwork for your new home or helping you put insurance in place for your existing art portfolio. Please get in touch if you think we can help in any way.