26 Jan 2006
Dawn C.

Scroll Mounting in San Diego

Gary and Sandy,

My boss bought some Chinese watercolor paintings during his last trip to China. (each approx 13" x 46 1/2") He is having difficulty, however, finding a place to have them placed onto silk scrolls. I was directed to your site after doing a Google search for "Chinese scroll mounting San Diego". I see that you have a gallery in the San Diego area, where we are, and was hoping you might know of a local resource for this.

(I've enjoyed looking at the beautiful paintings on your site and had the good fortune to come across the remarkable story of Mr. Ou-Yang, the one-armed painter. What an uplifting account and inspiration for the rest of us.)

Thank you for any assistance you may be able to provide.

Enjoy your travels.

Respectfully,

Dawn C.

Reply from
Gary

RE: Scroll Mounting in San Diego

Well, here's the deal...

We do offer scroll mounting services, but not at our San Diego location.

All mounting is done in our Beijing workshop.

The cost is only $17.50 for scrolls of the size you need. The downside is that is costs almost as much to air mail the scrolls back to you.

Postage and packaging is about $15.80 for one scroll, and $4.80 for each additional scroll shipped in the same box (maximum 35-40 scrolls will fit in one of the largest boxes - which probably does not apply in this case).

I can refer you to a mounter in San Diego, but this same size scroll will cost you $200 each (no, I am not kidding).

Obviously, the cost of living is lower in China, and therefore labor cost less too.

We've just entered the Chinese New Years Holiday, so we are shut down for the next two weeks in China. But from the day the artwork arrives in Beijing, it's usually about 4-6 weeks to mount the scrolls, and two weeks for air mail delivery (for non-rush service).

Let me know if we can help.

Cheers,
-Gary.

19 Jan 2006
Joshua

Blank Scrolls Available?

Hi Gary,

Do you sell blank scrolls for painting or calligraphy? Or do you sell silk brocade like wallpaper for mounting?

Thanks.

Joshua Hough

Chinese calligrapher

Reply from
Gary

RE: Blank Scrolls Available?

We can mount your work to wall scrolls in our workshop in Beijing.

Blank scrolls are kind of dangerous in my opinion, as one mistake, and all is lost.

But if you do your calligraphy on xuan paper, and then send the paper to Beijing, in a few weeks, you'd get nice wall scrolls returned to you via air mail.

Medium-sized wall scrolls, where the xuan paper is about 13" x 38" (33cm x 96.5cm), are $17.50 each. This includes your choice of our standard white or gold silk brocade.

Custom colors and special styles are extra of course.

Cost of the scroll increases by $2.50 for each additional inch (2.5cm) of width (we ignore length to make pricing more simple).

Shipping is steep if you are getting only one scroll, but gets better with the more you do at the same time...

1 scroll $15.80 for air mail postage and packaging from Beijing to anywhere in the world.
2 scrolls $20.60
3 scrolls $25.40
4 scrolls $30.20
5 scrolls $35.00
and basically $4.80 for each additional scroll.
These shipping estimates apply to scrolls with artwork 13" (33cm) wide which will yield scrolls measuring 20" (52cm) at the wooden knobs. Larger scrolls have higher shipping costs.

If you don't mind waiting longer, we can use SAL (Sea Air-Lifted - sometimes called Economy Air Mail) which is about 1/3 less, but takes 4-6 weeks for delivery from China.

I've found a couple places that mount silk wall scrolls in the USA, but they charge around $200 for one scroll. This was when I was doing research to see if I could save money by sending unmounted artwork to the states, and have it mounted there. I was thinking that I would save some of my shipping costs, but the labor cost proved to make this not feasible.

The prices would be the same for blank scrolls if you want to carry the risk of possible mistakes. I know my calligrapher in Beijing has a trash can full of "not good enoughs" whenever I visit him.

There is not really a quantity price break or anything (this seems to be the next question posed after I give someone this info). We sort of offer this service as a courtesy for artists that are struggling to find someone to mount their work in their home country. I pretty much only make pocket change on each one.

The only break is that fact that the more you buy, the more the shipping is divided, thus dropping the cost of shipping for each scroll. Please note that everything resets after 35-40 scrolls, as that is the maximum that we can ship in the largest box allowed by the post office in Beijing.

We have a guy in the Netherlands and another guy in the UK that send me artwork to mount every few months, and they always seem happy with the quality of the work, so I am sure you will be too.

Cheers,
-Gary.

Note that some text above was changed from the original reply to reflect changes in Chinese postal rates.

28 Dec 2005
Kevin Yee

Mount a rubbing to a scroll

Hi, I have a rubbing that I would like to mount to a blank scroll. The piece is 33" wide by 64" long. Can you please tell me if you have or could get a scroll to fit this and what the cost would be. I'm in the US.
Thanks, Kevin

Reply from
Gary

RE: Mount a rubbing to a scroll

The cost to mount it on a silk scroll is only about $67.50 in our Beijing workshop. However, I am limited by Chinese postal regulations to about 32" length for packages. Your 33" wide artwork would yield a scroll that will measure over 40" at the wooden knobs.

There are three ways that I can get this out of China:

1. Bribe a postal worker, and customs officer - total shipping and bribery cost: roughly $50-60.

2. Use DHL, UPS, or FedEx - total shipping cost at least $108.

3. Wait until the end of March when I fly to the states from China. Value of space used in my luggage for your artwork rather than our artwork plus postage to forward it to you: $40 (benefit: more secure than bribery plan).

While this may all seem ridiculous to you (as it does to me), no matter which option you choose, it's still cheaper than Asian art mounters in the states who charge $200 to mount even a much smaller wall scroll - I'd guess this is a $400 job in the states.

Let me know if we can help.

Cheers,
-Gary.

Edited by Gary on 4/29/06

23 Aug 2005
Irene

Blank Scrolls

Ni hao Gary,
I really enjoyed your site while looking for an embroidery of the Long Life Character, suitable for framing and about 3 feet by 2 feet approximately. I have also been to China a few times and am studying Mandarin as a challenge to emit those sounds one way or the other. Although I am past my prime as they say I enjoy learning. Perhaps you can tell me where I can find Blank scrolls so that I can mount my paintings on them. Framing is expensive especially for a novice like me but it would be an idea to put up some art work that way. Any ideas? Thanks. xiexie
Irene

Reply from
Gary

RE: Blank Scrolls

Dear Irene,

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how scrolls are made, or what the normal process is...

Here is the typical situation:

A piece of artwork or calligraphy is painted on a thin sheet of xuan paper (most people call this rice paper). Once the art is complete, the rice paper is mounted (laminated) to a few more sheets of rice paper, and some silk brocade cloth is also laminated around the outside of the artwork. This cloth then becomes a scroll when a wooden roller is added to the bottom, and a frame and rigging is added to the top.

This general plan allows the artist to abandon the artwork if he/she makes a mistake before the added expense of scroll mounting.

That being said, what we can do is mount your artwork in China, and ship it back mounted to scrolls. All you would have to do is send your art to our address in China.

Otherwise, I can cautiously provide 'blank scrolls' for you. Which is more simple for me, but more risky for you (if you tend to make mistakes sometimes when creating your artwork).

The downside is the cost of shipping. The scroll itself only costs me about $15, but the cost to pack and ship just one scroll is about $15.80. If I ship several, the cost of shipping the additional ones is less than $5 each. This is different than the current shipping special on our website, as I would be providing items at nearly my direct cost. (we eat some shipping costs with our website sales).

Let me know if you want me to help you on this.

Cheers,
-Gary.