Unframed canvas wants a wide mailing tube; anything framed and glazed wants a flat telescoping box or a mirror-style kit. Neither is exotic. Art and framing suppliers, moving-supply retailers, packaging wholesalers and shipping storefronts all sell one or both, and the piece in front of you decides which aisle to look in.
Off the stretcher, it rolls. Framed and glazed, it stays flat.
A frame shop or art-supply retailer stocks both shapes as a matter of course: mailing tubes in several diameters for canvas and prints, and flat telescoping boxes sized for common frame ranges. Staff who crate finished work for customers daily are also a fast source of sizing advice.
Companies that sell boxes for household moves carry mirror-and-picture kits, four interlocking L-shaped panels that assemble around a framed piece rather than being cut to it, plus their own telescoping picture cartons in moving-truck-friendly sizes.
Industrial packaging suppliers sell both tubes and telescoping picture boxes by the case, at a lower per-unit price than any retail counter. Worth the order once you are shipping more than one or two pieces, whether for a gallery, a studio or a resale business.
A neighborhood shipping and printing storefront usually stocks a small range of both shapes on the shelf, or can order one in same-day. It is the fastest option when a piece needs to move tomorrow rather than next week.
Sizing an art box wrong in either direction costs money: too tight and there is no room for padding, too loose and every extra inch is billed as dimensional weight. Two of our guides already worked through real examples of both shapes.
Our rolled artwork cost guide packed a real canvas into a mailing tube and quoted it live, with the interleaving and rolling technique that keeps the paint layer from cracking. Our picture frame shipping box guide does the same for a flat, glazed piece, with the sizing rule for how much clearance a frame box needs around the actual frame. Read whichever matches the piece before buying, since the two shapes are not interchangeable and a canvas jammed into a flat box, or a frame forced into a tube, both end badly.
If the piece is framed and under glass, the packing sequence itself, X-taping the glass, foam-board sandwiching, corner protection, matters as much as the box. Our framed art with glass guide covers that step by step, sourced from FedEx's own packing guidance.
It depends on the piece. Art and framing supply stores, moving-supply retailers, packaging wholesalers and general shipping storefronts each carry either mailing tubes for rolled canvas or telescoping picture boxes and mirror kits for framed work, and most carry both.
Any wide, rigid tube works as long as it clears the rolled diameter with room for interleaving paper; art and mailing-supply stores sell tubes specifically sized for canvas and posters, but a plumbing-supply or shipping-tube retailer's stock tube does the same job.
Two open-ended sleeves that slide into each other, letting one box adjust across a range of flat dimensions rather than being cut to one fixed size. Moving-supply retailers and art shippers both sell them, usually in a small range of standard heights and widths.
No. SMKlog prices and sells the parcel label once the piece is packed. It does not manufacture, stock or ship art-specific packaging.