Shipping Sicilian Ceramics to the United States
Ceramics are heavy, fragile and made to order, which makes shipping them across the Atlantic a fair question to ask before you buy rather than after. This page sets out how it actually works when a piece leaves Caltagirone for an address in the United States.
The timeline, in two parts
People usually ask “how long does delivery take” and mean the whole wait. It is worth separating the two halves, because they are very different in length and only one of them is transport.
Production: up to 30 days
Every piece is made after the order is confirmed. The clay is worked, dried, given a first firing, hand-painted, then fired again. None of those stages can be rushed without showing in the result, and drying times depend on the size of the piece and the season. We allow up to 30 days from order confirmation. If you pay by bank transfer, the clock starts when the payment clears.
Around the Christmas period production is suspended for a stretch, so orders placed in late autumn for December delivery should be placed early.
Transit: 4 to 9 days
Once the piece is packed it travels by UPS, FedEx or DHL, depending on destination and size, and reaches most US addresses in 4 to 9 days. You receive tracking when the parcel leaves.
Customs and duties
Shipments to the United States currently travel DAP — Delivered At Place. In practice this means the price you pay us covers the goods and the transport, and any import duties or taxes owed on arrival are collected separately by the carrier before delivery.
What you will owe, if anything, depends on the declared value of the order and on the US import rules in force at the time your parcel arrives. Those rules have changed more than once in recent years, so we would rather point you to the carrier’s own duty estimator than quote a threshold here that might be out of date by the time you read it. UPS, FedEx and DHL all publish one.
The practical point: budget for the possibility of a customs charge on delivery, and do not be surprised by a message from the carrier asking you to settle it before the driver comes.
Breakage, and what protects you
Transit insurance is included on every shipment. Not an upsell, not a checkbox — it is simply always there.
There is one thing we need you to do, and it takes five seconds. Sign for the delivery “with reserve”, even when the outer box looks perfect. Most couriers let you write this next to your signature, on paper or on the driver’s device. It is the step that keeps an insurance claim open if you open the box later and find a crack.
If you sign clean and then discover damage, the claim becomes very difficult to make. This is not specific to us; it is how carrier liability works everywhere. So: unpack carefully, photograph the box before you open it if anything looks knocked, and write “with reserve” when you sign.
Cost
International shipping is charged by destination and is calculated at checkout, before you pay, so the figure you confirm is the figure you pay. There is no free-shipping threshold for the United States — the free shipping we offer over €100 applies to Italian addresses only, and we would rather say so plainly than let you discover it at the last step.
Klarna is available if you prefer to spread the cost: three instalments, or payment 30 days after delivery.
Returns from the USA
You have 14 days from receipt to return a piece. It must come back intact and in its original packaging, and the refund covers the goods but not the original shipping cost. Write to us first and we will send the instructions and the return label.
Before you order
Two things worth doing while you decide. Check the dimensions in inches as well as centimetres — Sicilian pieces are consistently larger than photographs suggest. And if you are choosing between models, ask us: we can tell you which decorations hold up best in strong light, and which pieces travel well.
The catalogue with US-facing prices and both units is at italianpottery.us. Questions go to our contact page, and we answer in English.