Resources · Provenance and authenticity
Who can certify a work, how the chain of ownership is kept, and how it works for artists no longer living.
By OxiArt
Provenance is the documented history of a work: who made it, who has owned it, where it has been shown, and how it changed hands. Good provenance is what lets a buyer, a bank or an insurer trust a work.
The artist certifies their own work from their studio on OxiArt. Each certificate is issued through OxiCert and kept on OxiRecord, where it cannot be changed afterwards. Later sales, gifts and loans add to the same chain.
When the artist has died, provenance can be provided by parties Oxi has authorised for that artist: the estate, descendants, formally assigned representatives, and authorised traders and dealers with a documented history of handling the artist's work. Their authorisation, and what it covers, is shown on their page on OxiArt.
The certificate itself is bought from the authorised dealer's or estate's shop on Oxishops. OxiArt shows the record; Oxishops is where the service is paid for.
A work shown on OxiArt is not certified by being shown. A certified work says so, and says who certified it and on what evidence. Recertification of a work with gaps in its history needs evidence; it is never a new claim made without grounds.
Anyone can order the full chain history of a certified work from OxiCert: every certificate, in order, with who issued each.