What you agree to, and what we owe you.

Terms of sale

Who you are dealing with

Le Custode is the trading name of [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], registered in the Netherlands under KVK 54575583, VAT number [VAT NUMBER], registered at [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Correspondence goes to hello@lecustode.com.

What is being sold

One artwork, composed by hand from original artwork you send us. Every artwork is made for a single customer from that customer's own materials. No two are the same and none can be resold.

The format, price and delivery window shown when you order are the ones that apply. Prices include VAT and exclude delivery of the finished artwork, and are published on the site rather than quoted on request. Artworks above €1,000 are arranged by request: the price on the site is the price we confirm, and nothing is charged before you accept it.

Placing an order

An order becomes binding when the deposit is received. Before that point the commission is recorded but nothing is charged and nothing starts on the bench.

We may decline a commission — if the artwork cannot survive handling, if the request falls outside what the bench can do, or if the pieces sent do not match the format ordered. If we decline, anything paid is returned in full.

Paying in two halves

• Half on ordering. This starts the work and pays for the materials cut to your format. It is refundable, less a €45 administration fee, up to the moment your parcel is opened at the atelier — see cancelling, below.
• Half before it ships. Due when the artwork is finished. We write with a photograph, and the artwork leaves the atelier the working day after the balance clears.

If the balance is not paid within ninety days of that request, we will write twice more and then store the artwork at cost. The deposit is not returned in that case, and the artwork remains yours to claim.

The right of withdrawal

Under Dutch and EU consumer law you normally have fourteen days to change your mind about something bought online. That right does not apply here, because the artwork is made to your specification from materials you supply. This is the exception in article 6:230p under b of the Dutch Civil Code.

You are asked to agree to this explicitly before ordering, in the same words: the artwork is made to order from your own materials, so the fourteen-day right of withdrawal does not apply and the commission cannot be cancelled once the atelier has begun.

Cancelling

Up to the moment your parcel is opened at the atelier, you can cancel by writing to us. The order is unwound against a €45 administration fee, which covers the send-in label already issued and the materials already cut, and the rest of the deposit is returned. Your drawings go back to you in the same condition they arrived.

After the parcel is opened the commission is under way and cannot be cancelled. That moment is when cutting begins, and it is the point the exemption above turns on.

Your drawings

Your originals stay yours. Sending them to us transfers nothing.

We cut, layer and mount the pieces you send. Composition means cutting: pieces are trimmed, overlapped and fixed down, and that cannot be undone. Tell us on the order form what must not be trimmed, and we will work around it or write to you first.

Every original we do not use comes back with the finished artwork. Nothing is discarded.

Delivery, insurance and the record of what arrived

Sending the drawings to us is free: the prepaid send-in label is included in every price. Delivery of the finished artwork is not included and is charged by size and destination, at the rates published on the delivery page. The price you agree at checkout is the price on that table.

Both parcels are insured for the full value of their contents for the whole of the journey, in both directions, rather than to a carrier’s standard limit. Every piece you send is photographed in high resolution on the day it arrives, and the finished artwork is photographed again before it leaves. Those photographs are the record of condition, held for the life of the guarantee, and we will send them to you on request.

Artworks of 91 × 183 cm and larger travel crated on a pallet by freight rather than through a parcel network. Delivery is by appointment.

Photographs of finished work

We do not publish photographs of your artwork, your child's drawings or your name without your written permission. If we ask, you are free to say no and it changes nothing about the commission.

Timing

The delivery windows on the site are honest estimates from a bench that works in the order commissions arrive: four to six weeks as standard, faster on a priority commission, or an agreed date in writing where that has been quoted. Curing is never shortened to make a date.

Where a fixed date has been agreed in writing and we miss it through our own delay, you may cancel and have everything paid returned, including the deposit.

Guarantee

Five years on the making: the mount, the seal, the artwork and the fixings. It covers failure of the work, not accident, damp, direct sun or the passage of time on paper that was already decades old when it reached us.

Your statutory rights as a consumer sit alongside this guarantee and are not limited by it.

Liability

Our liability for a commission is limited to what you paid for it, except where the law does not permit that limit — death, personal injury, or damage caused deliberately or through gross negligence.

The honest sentence in this section is the one about your drawings: a parcel is insured to [INSURED VALUE], and that money does not replace a drawing. It is why the send-in label is tracked and signed for, why every piece is photographed on arrival, and why we would rather you posted ten drawings than forty.

Disputes

Dutch law applies. If we cannot settle something between us, the dispute goes to the competent court in Amsterdam. As an EU consumer you can also use the European online dispute resolution platform.

Which language governs

These terms are written in English and in Dutch. For a consumer resident in the Netherlands the Dutch text is the one that governs, whichever version you read before ordering; for everyone else, the English. The German, French, Spanish and Italian versions are translations offered so you can read the terms in your own language, and they are not the authoritative text — where a translation ever disagrees with the English or the Dutch, tell us. One of them is wrong, and we would rather fix it than argue from it.

Privacy

What we hold, and why

Nothing on this site is loaded from a third party. The typefaces are served from our own domain rather than Google's, so reading a page tells nobody but us that you were here.

• To make and deliver your artwork: your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, and everything you told us about the artwork. Kept because a commission cannot be made or delivered without it.
• To take payment: the amount, the method and the payment reference. Card and bank details never reach this site — they are entered at Mollie and we never see them.
• To invoice correctly: your company name and VAT number, where you gave them.
• To understand the order form: which step people stop at, how long they spent, and which format was selected. Tied to a random identifier that lasts as long as the browser tab, with no name, no email and no IP address.
• To stop the order form being flooded: a salted, one-way hash of your network address, kept for two days. It cannot be turned back into an address and is never joined to your order.
• To see whether anyone is reading the site: a random identifier that lives as long as the browser tab, and the page you are on. Deleted a quarter of an hour after you leave, so it can say how many people are here now and can never say who was here yesterday.

Who else sees it

Four processors, each doing one job: Supabase stores the database, Vercel serves the site, Mollie takes the payments, and Resend sends the emails. Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared with anyone who is not needed to make your artwork arrive.

Carriers receive your address and telephone number, because a parcel cannot be delivered without them.

How long

Order records are kept for seven years, which is what Dutch tax law requires of the invoices attached to them. Nothing else is kept that long, and none of it depends on somebody remembering to tidy up — each of these expires on its own:

• Photographs of your drawings, and of the finished artwork: eighteen months after your commission is delivered or cancelled. Long enough to answer a repair, short enough that a breach in five years cannot reach a drawing made today.
• Your shipping label: ninety days. It is a PDF with your address on it and no use once the parcel has arrived.
• Anonymous order-form statistics, which carry no name or address: fourteen months.
• The atelier letter: you stay on that list until you unsubscribe, and every letter carries a link to do it.

What you can ask for

A copy of everything we hold is a button on your account page — it downloads as a file, immediately, without anyone reading your request first. The same page is where you ask to be erased.

Erasure is not instant, and we would rather say why than pretend. A commission still on the bench cannot be emptied without abandoning the work, and anything attached to an invoice less than seven years old has to keep the name and address it was issued to. Everything else — the brief, your child’s name, the telephone number, the photographs — goes within the day, and we write to you naming exactly what was kept and why.

You can also ask for a correction, or write to hello@lecustode.com about any of it. If our answer does not satisfy you, you can complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Returns

Made-to-order artworks

A finished artwork cannot be returned for a change of mind, for the reason set out under the right of withdrawal above: it is made from your own drawings and has no second owner.

Damage, faults and what actually goes wrong

If the artwork arrives damaged, photograph it before unpacking further and write to us the same day. Transit damage is insured and we remake or repair at our cost.

If something we made fails — a lifted mount, a failed seal, a fixing that pulls — it comes back to the atelier and is put right. That is what the five-year guarantee is for.

If the artwork is not what we agreed, say so. We send a photograph of the layout during composition for exactly this reason: it is the point at which a misunderstanding can still be moved.

Gift cards

A gift card is valid for two years from the day it is bought, and the date is fixed then — a later change to these terms cannot shorten a card already sold.

It can be spent on any commission, in one go or across several, and the balance that is left stays on the card. It is not exchangeable for money, and we cannot replace a code that has been given away and then lost by whoever received it — so keep the email.

If a card is bought and the artwork it pays towards is later cancelled, the amount goes back onto the card rather than to a bank account, less the same administration fee that applies to any cancellation.

VAT on a gift card falls due when it is spent on an artwork, not when the card is bought. That is why the receipt for a card is not a VAT invoice, and why the invoice for the commission shows the full amount with the card applied against it.

Cookies

This site sets no tracking cookies and shows no advertising.

What is stored on your device

• Your half-finished order, in your browser's local storage, so a form you started on Tuesday is still there on Thursday. It never leaves your device until you submit it, and clearing your browser data removes it.
• Your language choice, so the site opens the way you left it.
• A session identifier for the order form, which lasts as long as the tab and is not a cookie.
• A signed-in session, but only for atelier staff using the back office. Customers never receive one.

Measurement

Page views are counted with Vercel Web Analytics, which sets no cookie and stores no identifier that follows you between sites or between visits. There is nothing here to consent to, which is why you are not asked.

Accessibility

The site aims at WCAG 2.1 level AA. In practice that means text keeps its contrast against its actual background, every interactive element can be reached and used from the keyboard with a visible focus ring, images carry descriptions, and nothing moves that you did not ask to move.

Known gaps

• The order form is long. It saves as you go, and it can be completed across several sittings.
• Photographs of finished artworks describe what is in them, but a photograph of a composition is difficult to convey in a sentence. If you want a fuller description of a piece, ask and we will write one.

If something blocks you

Write to hello@lecustode.com and tell us what failed and what you were using. We fix accessibility faults ahead of features, and we will tell you when it is done rather than leaving you to check.

Last updated 19 August 2026. Material changes are announced on this page before they take effect, and never applied to a commission already placed.