Vineyard Garden in Napa is a 24 inch commissioned reverse hand painted glass chandelier by artist Jenny Floravita.
Just a friendly reminder to all of you—this is the season where you need to quickly pick up boxes from your front porches. I suggest watching tracking emails on your more valued items while they are en route to you.
Due to the high value of my hand painted chandeliers, UPS asks that I use signature confirmation for ALL of my works! We do this because UPS is on the hook if they mis-deliverer a chandelier, it ensures that my claims are successful. For the record, I probably have a 3% claim rate, which is as good as it gets for glass. We really have few problems and that is because no expense is spared in packing—that ensures the best chances of a successful glass art delivery even if the ride there was bumpy.
I have shipped a few hundred chandeliers so I’m not new to this process and I must say that UPS has only had ONE time when they mis-delivered a chandelier. It happened past the hour of 8pm, which is an unusually late delivery time—in fact, it’s outside of their normal delivery hours. This was in late November a couple years ago. The clients who were watching tracking received an email saying that the chandelier had been delivered. And actually, they were waiting on two separate chandeliers. I am a bit cautions to ship multiple works of art to a single address so I prefer that UPS stagger my chandelier deliveries and pick-ups for this reason (and I have another story here on this topic for a later time).
My clients called me and were very distressed as was I—this had not happened before but I told them not to worry and that it would get sorted out the next day and it did. My collectors live in a semi-rural town where many of the people had known each other for decades so good thing that didn’t happen in my neighborhood! Houses were spaced out and the lost chandelier was delivered to an address almost a half mile away! Luckily these people had known my clients for many years. They brought the box to them on Saturday morning—to everyone’s relief. The UPS man had clearly been behind in schedule and didn’t even ring the doorbell as he should have for signature delivery. This small detail would have given me a valid claim had this lovely chandelier had met with a bad end, or if it had been stolen off a doorstep—that’s the real reason for signature confirmation in valuable work. I never want claims because they come with the added stress and pressure knowing that my good collectors are still waiting to receive one of my gorgeous hand painted chandeliers.
Vineyard Garden in Napa is a 24 inch commissioned reverse hand painted glass chandelier by artist Jenny Floravita.
This is the time of year where people with less moral values will look for packages on doorsteps—happened to us a year ago and my husband…he seems to know everything going on in the neighborhood—he knew just the house to visit. And as that’s a waste of emotional energy, I suggest signature confirmation for the items for your high value items that are shipping this holiday season. If it’s not convenient to be home for everything, you can arrange via tracking to have your boxes held at your closest UPS hub for you to pick up at your best time-frame.
The last two points that I’d like to bring up is to watch your tracking for delays. Bad weather along a route can cause a delay of a day or two—had that happen plenty of times with my gorgeous hand painted chandeliers last winter. Also, UPS will try to deliver twice and then ship back if you take no action to pause a delivery which is the only downside of signature confirmation…but in the end, I think it’s better to have a delivery held at a UPS hub if the eta falls in a time when you cannot receive. You will have better peace of mind. And you can also always ship to a business that is open to UPS hours.
This last point just triggered another memory from many years ago. I shipped to a storage facility for an interior design company with specific instructions on who’s storage unit would receive. I did email my contact after the delivery had taken place to confirm she had received and opened the box to check on the glass—heard nothing. Designers can be so busy with projects that sometimes they don’t get back and in hindsight I should have pursued it but I never like to bug…anyway, to finish the story, a whole year passed and then some…and then I got a phone call—they never received! Well, I called my gal at UPS Store and they received a digital signature from archives from UPS, the secretary who had an unusual name had signed and received. My beautiful chandelier that was custom painted for a client of theirs, it was indeed somewhere in the storage facility and my guess is that they would find it eventually. Signature confirmation really came in handy there. I did feel truly bad that they lost the box for it…and that taught me to be more vigilant when working with interior designers, to bug them if I don’t hear back if we are working on a project together. And since then, I’ve never experienced the same problem. That taught me a couple lessons and I’ve implemented ‘bugging’ into my process, where I do check back with clients until I get them to open boxes.
The beautiful hand painted glass chandelier that you are viewing in this post features mixed flowers and vineyard themes. My chandeliers are painted in reverse on the inside of the glass, an old art form also known as reverse glass painting. Each of my chandeliers is an original and painted solely by me—Jenny Floravita. My hand painted chandeliers are wonderful works of art that you will enjoy for a lifetime! Thank YOU for viewing them!!!
