Friday, June 08, 2012

Lots of good commentary on packing. Here are a couple. More to go next week.

First, perfume bottle collector, Bonnie Salzman of Richmond, Virginia recommends.

Alan,

Those of us who collect perfume bottles really hate bubble wrap. I had bubble wrap actually stick to the glass as a result of extreme heat. It was a mess getting it off, and chance of breakage is great if you don’t realize the plastic is stuck.

In my view, glass of any type should be first wrapped in plain white tissue paper. Then, we use under pads (these are soft padded stuff on one side, plastic barrier on the outside – used in hospitals and at home for incontinence- can be purchased in any drugstore) to wrap the item in, soft side in. A rubber band works well to hold it in place, or one piece of tape. IF the item is being shipped, then bubble wrap goes on the outside of the under pad, again, with only enough tape as necessary to hold the wrap in place.

Dealers who take bottles to shows, pack and unpack into crates, use this method. Bubble wrap may be used to separate layers, but generally not to wrap the glass.

Bonnie Salzman
Richmond, VA

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Another Richmond, Virginian, Willson & Susan Craigie

Scotch tape is no problem. The extreme difficulty comes just as Alan described when PACKAGING TAPE is wrapped all over the piece – over bubble wrap, paper, or whatever.

I agree with Mr. Sweigart – “Wrapping tape around the bubble wrap prevents the unwrapping of it.”. – Or at very least makes unwrapping it a very risky task.

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Brooklyn’s Tommy Dreiling brings up a rather new and novel shipping idea.

Here’s my trick for shipping glass. I go to a dollar store and buy a hard, hard plastic or metal bucket or waste paper basket and wrap the piece first in dish towels then loosely in bubble wrap then put it in the bucket with peanuts to finish out filling the space and put that in a box with four or five inches of peanuts on each side. The hard bucket protects it from those hard bounces. I heard about this from a now deceased Victorian Art Glass dealer named Maud Feld. I’ve never lost a piece shipped in a bucket. – Thomas Dreiling

PS. I agree that many shippers using way too much tape, and also they pull the tape as hard as they can around the piece, causing a lot of internal strain to the glass, so with one hard hit the piece just shatters inside the bubble wrap and tape from the strain of being wrapped way too tight.

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2012 Carder Steuben Club annual Symposium will be held at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY from September 20-22, 2012.

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