Your painting arrives in a tube: unrolling, stretching and clearing customs

Every painting we send leaves Shenzhen as a cardboard tube about the length of a golf umbrella and roughly as heavy as a bag of sugar. Inside is a finished, varnished, signed oil painting. Almost every first-time buyer opens that tube and feels a small drop of disappointment, because this is not what they pictured arriving. Two weeks later the same buyer sends a photograph of it hanging above the sofa. This guide is about the two weeks in between — and about the money that changes hands at the border in the middle of them.

Why it travels rolled, not stretched

A stretched 24 × 36 in canvas cannot be posted. It has to be crated, and a crate for that size measures roughly 40 × 32 × 6 in. Couriers charge on volumetric weight, so that box bills as about 53 lb even though it weighs 12–14 lb on a scale. The same painting rolled into a 4 in tube bills as under 5 lb. That is a factor of ten, and it is the only reason free worldwide shipping on a $189 canvas is arithmetic rather than marketing.

The second reason is damage. A tube is a rigid shell with nothing protruding. A crate protects a frame, and the frame is where transit damage usually happens — corners, mitres, glass. Rolled, there are no corners to crush.

The consequence should be stated plainly, because it is the part buyers skim: the painting arrives as fabric, and someone has to stretch it. That is a twenty-minute job for any framer. You should know what it costs before you order, not after.

What is actually inside the tube

• The canvas, paint side out, rolled around a rigid core with acid-free interleaving so nothing presses into the surface.
• A numbered certificate of authenticity — signed, with title, painted dimensions and completion date.
• The commercial invoice and customs declaration. This matters more than it sounds; see the customs section below.
• The finished dimensions to the half inch, so your framer builds bars to the painting rather than to a listing.
• Care notes: 40–55 per cent humidity, no direct sun, no glass, dust with a dry brush.

The first 48 hours: flattening it without cracking it

Do not fight the curl. It is not damage; it is the memory of a tube. Lay the canvas paint side up on a clean table, weight the four corners with books of two to three pounds each, and leave it for 24–48 hours at normal room temperature, 18–24°C. It will come most of the way flat on its own, and the framer takes out the rest when the canvas is pulled over bars.

Four things not to do, all of which we have heard about after the fact:

• No iron, no steamer, no hairdryer. Heat softens varnish and dulls it permanently; the sheen never comes back evenly.
• No sunlight to relax it. You would be trading a curl for the exact UV fading the care guide warns about.
• Never unroll face-down on a hard floor. A grain of grit under the paint film leaves a dent that cannot be raised.
• Do not leave it rolled for weeks until you get round to the framer. Canvas takes a set; three months in a tube produces a canvas that wants to curl for the rest of its life.

One seasonal warning. A tube that has spent a night in a delivery van at −5°C needs twelve to twenty-four hours indoors before you open it. Oil and varnish are brittle when cold, and unrolling a cold canvas is how you get a hairline crack along the curl — a crack that will not show until the light hits it from the side.

Stretching: what a framer actually does

Your framer builds four slotted, kiln-dried pine bars, staples the canvas around the back, and taps in eight small wedges called keys to tension it. Standard bars are 0.75 in deep and are designed to sit inside a frame. Gallery bars are 1.5 in deep, so the canvas can hang unframed with a clean profile.

Those are US framer prices for bars plus labour in 2026; the UK and EU typically run 1.3–1.6 times as much in local currency. Gallery depth also folds about 1.5 in of the painting around the edge, which is fine for a plain background and wrong for a composition with a hand or a shoulder near the border. If you want a gallery wrap, say so at the mock-up stage and we will keep two inches of quiet margin on every side. It costs nothing then and cannot be added later.

Four questions worth asking the framer on the phone:

1. Will you stretch to the painted dimensions on the certificate, not to the nearest stock size?
2. Are the bars kiln-dried, and will you key it out after a week? A new canvas relaxes a millimetre or two and needs a second tap.
3. Back-staples rather than edge staples, if it will hang without a frame?
4. How long is your queue right now? In December the honest answer is often two weeks.

Customs: the part of the price nobody quotes

Original hand-painted paintings sit in an unusual place in every tariff schedule: duty is almost always zero, and consumption tax almost never is. The zero is what studios quote. The tax is what arrives as a text message from the courier.

Two honest caveats. First, the United States: low-value clearance rules have changed more than once since 2025, and additional tariffs applied to Chinese-origin goods have moved in and out of scope. We do not pretend to predict your customs officer. We declare accurately under 9701.10, send the certificate with the parcel, and if a broker asks for documentation we send what we have the same day. Second, the handling fee is charged by the courier, not the tax office, and it is charged whether or not the tax is zero.

Which brings up the request we get most often: can you mark it as a gift, or declare $50? No, and the reason is not moral. A $50 declaration means $50 of insurance. If the parcel is opened, held or destroyed, the loss is yours and we cannot replace a painting we were never allowed to value properly. Accurate declarations are also what make a claim payable in seven days instead of seven weeks.

The first fifteen minutes, and the seven-day window

1. Film the unboxing in one continuous take, from sealed parcel to open canvas. It is the only evidence a carrier accepts without argument.
2. Photograph the tube before opening if there is any crush, dent or water stain.
3. Unroll on a clean, dry surface and look along the paint at a low angle. Raking light reveals dents and scuffs that straight-on light hides.
4. Check all four edges, the only part of a rolled canvas that touches anything in transit.
5. Keep the tube and interleaving until the framer has accepted the canvas.
6. If something is wrong, email within seven days with photographs and the video. Every parcel is insured for full value, and a canvas genuinely damaged in transit is repainted or replaced — but the claim runs on photographs, and it runs on a clock. The shipping and returns page has the exact procedure.

What is not in the box

No frame, no glass, no hanging hardware. That is deliberate rather than an omission.

• The frame costs $90–650 depending on style, and it should be chosen in your room, against your wall, by someone standing in front of it. The framing guide compares gallery wrap, float frame and traditional moulding with real prices.
• Glass is never used on an oil. It traps moisture, flattens the surface and hides the one thing you paid for.
• Hanging hardware is $8–15: two D-rings and braided wire for anything under 30 lb, a French cleat above that.

Shipping wood and glass across an ocean costs three to five times what shipping canvas costs, and arrives broken often enough that we stopped offering it.

Door to wall: the honest arithmetic

Work backwards from the date that matters. A Christmas gift needs the order in by 14 November for comfort and 1 December at the absolute limit, and both assume a framer who will take a canvas in the busiest month of their year. An anniversary in early December is a September conversation. If your date is fixed, tell us at the quote stage and we will confirm a schedule instead of promising one — the process page sets out each stage, and the size guide settles which canvas you are actually shipping before any of this starts.

The short version

• Rolled, not stretched, because a tube bills at a tenth of the freight and has no corners to crush.
• Unroll paint side up, weight the corners, wait 48 hours. No heat, no sun, no iron, ever.
• Stretching costs $40–150 at a US framer; gallery depth costs 30–50 per cent more and eats 1.5 in of the edges.
• Duty on originals is zero almost everywhere; VAT or GST is not, and the courier adds a handling fee on top.
• Film the unboxing, keep the tube, report damage inside seven days. 6–9 weeks door to wall, all in.

If the shipping arithmetic is the thing holding up your decision, send the photograph and the wall first. We will come back with a fixed price, a canvas recommendation and a delivery date that includes the border, usually within 24 hours — and the price table is public, so nothing in it will surprise you later.