Frequently Asked Questions
What people ask before they order, answered here rather than spread across four pages. If yours is not below, write and we will answer it and add it.
Before you order
What exactly am I buying?
A giclee print of a painting that is out of copyright, framed to order and sent ready to hang. Not an original, not hand painted, and not made by the artist named in the title.
What is ours is the restoration and the printing. What is in the picture belongs to everybody, which is the only reason a shop like this can exist.
What is the difference between the Classic and the Box frame?
How far the picture stands off the wall, and what the timber looks like up close. The face of the moulding is 20mm on both, and the print and glaze behind it are identical.
Classic is satin laminated and sits 22mm proud. Box is stained by hand and waxed so the grain reads, and sits 33mm proud, which is enough to cast its own shadow. Gold is a Classic option only, and on a nineteenth century oil it is the choice that looks like a gallery rather than a living room.
How are the sizes measured?
The size you choose is the print. The frame adds 20mm on every edge, so a 24 by 16 inch piece hangs at a little over 25 by 17.
Not every size is offered on every work. A composition is printed at the shapes it was painted in rather than cropped to fill a frame, so a tall painting and a wide one offer different ladders.
Is there a mount, and is it glass?
No mount. A painting hangs to its own edges, and a card window around a reproduction of one announces that it is a reproduction.
The glaze is acrylic. It survives the journey a framed picture has to make, and a large piece in glass is heavier on a wall than most people expect.
The restoration
What have you changed about the painting?
Two centuries of dirt. Old varnish yellows, and the craquelure of an aged object is the surface of the object rather than the surface of the painting. Both come off, so the picture reads the way it did the week it was finished.
The composition, the drawing and the colour relationships are reproduced rather than reinterpreted. Nothing is repainted, nothing is added and nothing is moved.
Can I see what it looked like before?
On every product page. There is a slider showing our version beside a scan of the original, so you can see exactly what changed before you spend anything.
That is deliberate. A shop that removes something from a painting and does not show you what it removed is asking to be trusted rather than checked.
Are you allowed to sell these?
Yes. Every work here is public domain in both the EU and the US, and each product page carries the year and the reasoning behind that.
If you believe a particular work does not clear one of those tests, write to us with the piece and the basis. We take it down while we check rather than after.
Delivery
How long will it take to arrive?
Allow 3 to 13 business days from order to doorstep. Checkout shows you the same window before you pay.
Framing is the part that varies. A simple piece is usually made in a couple of days, and the top of that range is there for the ones that are not. If you are buying for a date, work from the longer number.
Do you ship to my country?
Free to 6 countries: United States, United Kingdom and Ireland, Europe, Australia. Checkout will not accept an address anywhere else.
That is far fewer places than a courier could physically reach. A market makes the list only if there is a printing lab inside it, because a framed picture crossing an ocean is a framed picture arriving broken.
How do I track my order?
Your receipt arrives the moment you pay, and a second email follows when the parcel is collected, with the carrier and the tracking number in it.
A link that shows nothing on the first day is normal. The number exists from the moment the label is printed and starts moving when the parcel does.
Will I pay import duty?
No. Whichever of the four labs is closest to you is the one that prints and frames it, so the parcel is a domestic one and no border is crossed. That is the reason the country list is short rather than long.
If something goes wrong
It arrived damaged. What happens now?
Write to us inside 30 days of it turning up, quote the order reference, and attach a photograph. One taken on a phone is genuinely all we need.
Then choose: we make the piece again and resend it, or we refund you in full. Sending the damaged one back costs more than a replacement and would only break it further, so keep it.
The colour is not quite what I saw on screen.
Screens are backlit and paper is not, so a print will never match a monitor exactly and that difference is not something a remake can fix.
Where the difference goes beyond normal print variation, that is a fault and it is covered above. Send a photograph and we will tell you which of the two it is.
Can I return it because I changed my mind?
No. Nothing here exists until somebody buys it, and a finished piece has exactly one buyer, which is the trade that puts the whole collection on sale in five sizes instead of putting six paintings in a stockroom.
So ask first. If you are between two sizes, or cannot picture how a work will sit on a particular wall, send us the wall. Answering that costs us a few minutes and saves you a purchase you regret.
Looking after it
Do I need to frame or mount it?
Nothing at all. It leaves the lab assembled, glazed and fitted with hanging hardware, so the only tool you need is whatever puts a hook in your wall.
Where should it hang?
Out of direct sun, at room temperature, not above a radiator. Three rules, and they are the ones any framed work on paper has always wanted.
Skip the bathroom. Steam swells and lifts a wooden moulding long before it does anything to the paper behind the glaze.
How do I clean the glaze?
Dry microfibre, in one direction, and nothing else. Acrylic marks where glass would shrug, and household glass cleaner hazes it permanently.
Getting hold of us
hello@encoregalerie.com. Quote the order reference from your confirmation email. Every message is read and answered.