How to pack pictures for moving

Because it changes how the glass fails. Painter's tape run corner to corner across the front holds a broken pane together as a sheet, so the shards stay against the tape instead of dropping edge-first into the print behind. It does not prevent breakage. Never do this on acrylic glazing, which scratches, and never use tape that will bond to the surface in heat.

A sheet of stiff card cut to the frame goes against the glazing first, then padding around the whole thing, then corner protectors. Padding straight against glass gives the sheet nothing rigid to spread an impact across, and a point load on unsupported glass is what cracks it. Foam corners matter more than the wrap, because a frame lands on a corner far more often than on a face.

A picture carton or a mirror box, which is a flat carton in telescoping halves that adjusts to the height of the frame. Frames stand on their long edge inside it, several to a box, with a sheet of card between each one and paper filling the ends so nothing slides. Standing on edge is the same principle as plates: the frame is stiff across its perimeter and weak across its face.

Unframed paper work goes flat between sheets of acid-free tissue in a portfolio or a flat box, never rolled unless it arrived rolled. Rolling a print that has been flat for years cracks the ink layer at the curve. Stretched canvases are packed like frames, on edge, with card across the face and nothing pressing on the canvas itself, which dents inward and stays dented.

Picture boxes travel upright against a wall of the load, with nothing laid on top of them. Flat is the dangerous orientation both in the truck and in storage, because anything placed on a flat picture box is loading the glass across its unsupported centre. In storage, keep frames off exterior walls and out of direct sun, since heat and damp affect the paper long before they affect the frame.

Frames wrapped in bubble wrap alone and leaned against a wall during the loading, where they get knocked and land on a corner. Wrap them, box them, and get them into the truck rather than staging them against furniture. The other loss is invisible until unpacking: two frames packed face to face, where the raised edge of one has pressed a line into the surface of the other.