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Computer Graphics	How To Roll  A Painting If It Must Be Transported That Way It is true that paintings are occasionally rolled. Circumstances may arise when this is the only feasible means of carrying or transporting a painting, but it is never a wise one. Depending on its size, there are times when a painting cannot be transported except in a rolled state. If a painting must be rolled, it should be rolled on a rigid drum, either one of light wood or very strong fiber board. The drum cylinder should have the widest feasible diameter and be at least several inches longer than the width of the painting to be rolled onto it. A painting should always be rolled PAINTED SIDE OUT. If you think a moment you can see at once why this is true. The inner surface of anything rolled is squeezed together; the outer surface is stretched. If you squeeze a painted surface together it either has to wrinkle or chip off. If you stretch it, it cracks. Once the painting is flat again, the cracks although still present are minimized to hair lines. If the painted side has been squeezed, when you open it out you may find overlapping wrinkles or you may find the surface has been forced to chip away from the fabric support. If you have to roll your canvas painting (don't if you can avoid it) place it face down on a piece of glassine paper. Put your rolling cylinder at one edge of the canvas back, curve the edge of the painting up onto the cylinder and tape the tacking margin to the cylinder so that the painting will not tend to slip about. Then turn the cylinder over slowly so that as you roll the painting onto it, the glassine paper rolls with it, protecting the face of the picture from coming into direct contact with the threads of the fabric on the reverse. Then wrap the rolled painting and its cylinder in waterproof fabric or paper and seal it together with tape. If you can avoid it, don't use cord to tie up the parcel, because when this is pulled taut it will cut into the painting and leave its mark, just the way a tight belt does on a linen dress. The fragile nature of a painting on canvas does not change merely because it is out of sight. HOW TO MAKE A STRIP FRAME FOR TRANSPORTING YOUR PAINTING A strip frame is quite simple to make yourself or, if carpentry is beyond you, to have made. Take for example an average painting, size thirty inches by twenty-five inches, on a stretcher which is one inch thick. Get some wood about one-quarter or one-half inch thick and about two inches wide, cut two strips thirty inches long and two strips twentyfive inches long. In each piece of wood, about six inches from each end, drill two holes for screws. Then screw these strips onto the four edges of the stretcher for which they have been respectively cut so that there is a half inch of wood overlapping the reverse of the painting and a half inch overlapping the front side. If you want to, you can have the strips wider but a half inch overlap is sufficient for a painting of normal size. Use screws to put these strips on because (1) they go into the wooden edge of the stretcher and can be removed from it without exposing the painting to any shock or strain, (2) they are not apt to work loose, and (3) they permit the painting to be picked up by the strip without danger of the strip being pulled free accidentally. You now have your painting enframed in a little fence which you can hold onto without touching either the front or the back surface of the canvas. This is called a strip frame and it is worth in protection all the amount of trouble it takes to make. If you want to make a package of your painting in its strip frame, place it between two strong cardboards, slightly larger than its outer dimension and tie the whole together with string. Pull as tight as you wish because the pull of the cord is taken against the wooden stripping and does not come in contact with any part of the painting. This is a simple, easy and safe way to move an unframed painting, nothing can rub against the surface and the reverse is protected from any accidental denting or puncture.   HOW TO MOVE A PAINTING IN ITS FRAME If you do decide to leave the original frame on and want to move the framed painting in your car or a taxi certain precautions are advisable. If the thing is small enough to package, tie it up between two pieces of strong cardboard and pad the frame where the string will be pulled tight. Temporary pads can be made out of thick cloth or wads of corrugated paper. The cardboards can be held in place with masking tape but for greater security it is better to use strong cord as well. Amateur conditions of transportation usually involve a lot of hands, not all of them equally careful. Whenever you package a painting avoid the use of tacks, thumb tacks, nails, pins, etc., all items which can scratch the surface of your painting, puncture it or fall into the pocket between the canvas and the inner stretcher rim, if they get loose. If the framed painting is too large for you to package it conveniently, arrange it in your car between two strong cardboards so that it rests, either standing up or lying flat, with both front and back protected. If it is flat on the seat of the car, either have someone hold it or see that it is braced against any sudden jolt which might hurl it off the seat. Once some friends were bringing to our house a group of their paintings, carefully stacked in the back of their station wagon. They had no intervening cardboards between the paintings and they were without solid backing, but they had taken average precaution in a careful placing of the paintings. Exactly one block from where we live, a car ahead of them made an incorrect turn and to prevent an accident, the station wagon was wrenched to one side in a frightful jolt. No one was hurt. But the stacked paintings were jerked out of place and fell one into another, with a net result of three of them being pierced through the backs by the corners of the painting next in line. Another time a lady who was moving out of town for the summer took her favorite portrait with her in the car. She tied it carefully in place against the back of the front seat and covered it with a thick down quilt. On the back seat she placed neat bundles and a small portable radio. She too was forced to an emergency stop. All the items on the back seat lurched forward and fell onto the floor of the car, the radio smashed smack through the bed quilt and tore a ghastly hole in great grandmother's face. This kind of accident does not have to happen to paintings. It isn't that people don't use sense when they transport paintings, it's rather that they forget the nature of what they are handling. It may look solid but it isn't solid. A canvas painting presents a flat surface front and back, but it is a defenseless surface. Maybe it is not as tender as the skin of a balloon, nor as brittle as a thin sheet of glass, nor as crushable as a sheet of tissue paper, but nonetheless, rigid as it appears, it is a piece of FABRIC and should be handled with that in mind.