A Year on the Shelf: Chips, Drops and What Can Be Fixed

The email does not arrive in the week after delivery. It arrives eleven months later, or fourteen, usually on a Sunday night, usually with a photo attached and no punctuation.

the corner broke when I was dusting. can it be fixed

By then the order is long closed, the invoice is filed, and whoever answers the inbox has to make a decision in the next ten minutes that will either calm someone down or confirm their worst suspicion that they ruined the last object they have of their dog.

This is the part of a made-to-order product nobody writes about: the year after. Here is what actually breaks, what can be done, and what to say while you are doing it.

Ask for photos before they clean anything up

The first reply should not contain a policy. It should contain one question.

Can you send me two photos — one of the whole piece, one close on the damage? And keep the box if you still have it.

You need to see whether the wood is chipped or split, whether the face is cracked or only scratched at the edge, and whether the piece fell or was knocked against a counter. Those are four different situations and only two of them are anything you can help with.

The box matters more than people expect. If the piece was damaged in transit and the family is only opening it now, the carton is the evidence a carrier will ask for. If it has been in the recycling for a year, that route is closed and you should know it before you promise anything.

What the piece is, in one line, before anything else

Two layers of high-clarity glass with the photograph sealed between them — not natural quartz crystal — sitting on a solid wood base. The photo goes in during assembly and the glass closes over it. Nothing opens afterward.

That one fact determines every repair answer you will ever give. There is no way in. There is no way to replace the photograph, reseal the edge, or polish out a crack from the inside.

A chip on the base

This is the good outcome, and it is the most common one. The base is wood, the damage is usually a corner or an edge, and it is almost always cosmetic.

If the chipped edge is sharp, a light pass with 400-grit sandpaper followed by a wipe of mineral oil will take the bite off and darken the raw wood so it stops staring at you. It will not disappear. Tell the family that in advance, in those words, because a person who expects a miracle and gets an improvement feels cheated, and a person who expects an improvement and gets one feels looked after.

What you should not do is glue a splinter back on, fill the chip with wood putty, or touch up the finish with a marker. Those repairs look worse in six months than the chip ever did, and they make any later conversation harder.

A crack in the face

Different answer. Stop handling it, wrap it in a towel, and store it flat.

A crack in sealed glass cannot be repaired. Not by you, not by a glazier, not by anybody local who says they can. Once the seal is broken the photograph inside is exposed to air and light at the edges, and the piece is no longer the object it was.

The honest instruction to give: do not glue it, do not put tape across the crack, and do not keep it on a shelf above a bed or a sofa. Cracked glass can let go without warning, and the last thing a family needs is an injury on top of this.

Who pays

Two windows, and it helps to have them written down before the call comes.

Arrives damaged or doesn’t match your approved preview? We’ll remake it free. That covers the piece as it arrives, not the piece after a year on a shelf. A drop is not a transit claim, and a chip from a vacuum cleaner is not a defect. Say this once, plainly, without a lecture about care instructions.

What you can offer past that window is a second piece at the same price, built from the same photograph if the family still has the file. Same $329, or $249 at the launch price, same 15–18 days from the approved preview. It is a replacement, not a repair, and it is worth saying so rather than letting them assume a discount is coming because the first one broke.

Some providers eat part of that cost for a family in a bad moment. That is a business decision and a defensible one, but decide it in advance, not at 11 p.m. with a photo of a broken base open on your phone.

The awkward middle: it happened during shipping and nobody noticed

Families do not open boxes on the day they arrive. Sometimes the piece sits in a closet for three weeks because the week it came was the week everything else fell apart.

If the damage is clearly transit — crushed corner of the carton, impact mark that lines up with the chip — treat it as transit even if the calendar says day 26. Ask for photos of the carton. Then handle it as a remake and deal with the carrier on your own time, not in the thread with the family.

If the carton is gone and the story is vague, you are in judgment territory. Most providers land on: remake once, note it, and stop offering it to that account. It costs one piece. The alternative costs a review that says the piece arrived broken and nobody answered.

The words that make it worse

At least the photo survived. It did not. The photo is inside the glass.

These things happen. They know. They are the one it happened to.

Our policy is… Nobody grieving has ever been soothed by the word policy.

What works is shorter and duller. I’m sorry. That’s a real loss, on top of the other one. Send me two photos and I’ll tell you what I can do today, not next week.

Then actually answer the same day, even if the answer is no.

The care card you should have sent

Most of these emails would never be written if the box had contained four lines on a card. Not a warranty booklet. A card.

Lift it with both hands under the base, never by the top edge. Keep it out of direct sun, because the wood will shift color around the shadow of whatever sits beside it. Dust with a dry microfiber cloth, no spray, because liquid finds the seam. And if it ever falls, photograph it before you touch it.

Four lines, printed on the same card as the note you already put in the box. The note itself is covered in what ships with a memorial piece, and the two belong on one sheet.

When the family asks for the same photo again

They will. And this is where the file habits from the original order pay off.

If you kept the approved file, a replacement is a five-minute order. If the file lived on a phone that has since been replaced, you are asking a grieving person to go find the picture again, which is a bad ask a year in. Keep approved files for at least two years and name them by order number, not by pet name. Two dogs named Bella in the same month is not a hypothetical.

The replacement runs 7.9″ / 200 mm across and 20 mm thick, weighs 1.8 kg (nearly 4 lb), and ships worldwide with free shipping in the US. It arrives in the same box with the same card, and for the family it is the second time they have opened that box, which is its own kind of hard.

Send it with a handwritten line. Not an apology for the first one. Just: Made again from the same photograph. I hope this one stays on the shelf for a long time.

If you want the partner sheet with the spec, the preview step and how replacements are handled, ask for it here. MOQ is one.