"Escrow-protected" shows up in a lot of Obramaestra's copy — on the homepage, on every artwork page, in the checkout flow. It's worth spelling out exactly what it means, because it's the answer to the question every first-time collector actually has: I'm about to pay a stranger for a piece of art I've never held. What happens if this goes wrong?
The short version
When you check out, your payment doesn't go to the artist. It goes into escrow — held by Obramaestra, not spent, not released, not touched — until you tell us the artwork arrived and matches what you paid for. Only then does the artist get paid.
The four stages
- You pay. Funds move into escrow at checkout, not to the artist's account.
- Held safely. Obramaestra holds the payment while the artist prepares and ships the piece.
- Artist ships. The moment the artist marks the order shipped, a 14-day window starts.
- You confirm. You mark the order received — or, if you don't, it releases automatically once the 14 days are up.
That last point surprises people, so it's worth being direct about it: doing nothing doesn't leave your money in limbo forever. If a piece arrives and everything's fine, confirming manually gets the artist paid sooner — most collectors just do that the day it shows up. The 14-day auto-release exists for the ordinary case where nobody's actively withholding anything, not to punish you for being slow.
What if the piece doesn't show up, or shows up damaged?
Don't confirm receipt. That's the whole mechanism — confirming is the signal that releases payment, so as long as something's actually wrong, simply not confirming keeps the funds in escrow while it gets sorted out. From there it's case-by-case: damaged-in-transit and not-as-described cases can be returned by mail with the buyer reimbursed for that return shipping. The full policy, including exactly what qualifies, is on the Returns page.
Why this exists at all
Buying original art online has a structural trust problem in both directions: a collector is asked to pay in full for something they can't inspect first, and an artist is asked to ship a piece before getting paid for it. Escrow doesn't eliminate that risk, but it moves it off of both parties individually and onto a neutral third stage — the money exists, it's just not anyone's yet, until the thing that was promised actually shows up.
Escrow doesn't mean nothing can go wrong. It means when something does, there's still money in the room to fix it with.