How a Piece Travels

Every piece is packed with professional-grade foam, crating, and fragile handling labels. Tracked and insured, without exception and at no separate charge — it is part of what the shipping rate covers, not an upgrade.

We do not reuse thin retail boxes, newspaper, or the packing a piece happened to arrive in. Antiques break at their weakest point, and the weakest point is almost never where you expect.

Mirrors and glazed frames are corner-protected, faced, and floated in foam so nothing bears on the glass itself. Ceramics and glass are individually wrapped and double-boxed with a suspended inner carton.

Lighting travels in pieces: shades boxed separately, sockets and cord immobilized, any loose arm or prism removed, wrapped, and labeled so it can be put back exactly where it came from.

Furniture bound for freight has its corners, feet, and any protruding hardware protected first. Drawers and doors are secured so they cannot swing or slide in transit. Marble tops, glass shelves, and removable components come off, get wrapped separately, and travel with the piece.

The whole thing is then blanket-wrapped and crated or palletized, depending on what the piece needs rather than what is quickest.

Condition Guaranteed means one thing: the piece reaches you in the condition described and photographed in its listing. It does not mean flawless, and we would not want it to.

These are antiques. Age-appropriate wear — a scuff on a foot, a shrinkage check in a panel, an old repaired joint, silvering loss at the edge of a mirror — is part of what a hundred-year-old object is. We describe that wear in the listing and photograph it rather than shooting around it. What we guarantee is that the description is honest and the piece leaves us exactly as shown.

Every piece is photographed immediately before packing. That record is what condition on dispatch means, and it is what a carrier claim rests on if one is ever needed.

Inspect the piece before you sign for it. If anything is wrong — a crushed corner on the crate, a tear in the wrap, damage you can see — note it on the delivery receipt before the driver leaves. A receipt signed clean makes a freight claim very difficult to pursue afterward.

Photograph the packaging before you take it apart, and keep it until you are satisfied. Then contact us. The sooner we hear, the more we can do.