What Comes With Your Piece: The Certificate of Authenticity
Every Golden Emarat piece arrives with a signed Certificate of Authenticity. Here is what it records, why it matters, and - equally important - what it does not claim.
What the certificate records
- The title of the work
- The size and frame finish you selected
- The materials: real 24K gold on a museum-grade substrate, and 925 sterling silver where that model carries it
- The date of production
- Where the work is part of a genuine limited edition, its number within that edition
- The signature of the studio
Why provenance matters later
Provenance is the documented history of an object - what it is, who made it, and when. In the art market it is not a formality. It is the difference between an object with a history and an object with a story someone is telling you.
If a piece is ever sold, inherited, insured, or valued, the certificate is the document that answers the questions a serious buyer or an insurer will ask. An artwork without provenance is worth what it looks like. An artwork with provenance is worth what it is.
Keep it. Photograph it. Store it somewhere other than taped to the back of the frame, where it will eventually be thrown away with the packaging by someone who does not know what it is.
What a numbered edition means
A limited edition means a fixed number of a work will exist, and after that number is reached, no more are produced. If your certificate reads 12 of 50, then forty-nine other people own that work and nobody will ever own the fifty-first.
We describe a piece as numbered only when this is genuinely true. Most of our work is made to order, which means it is produced when you buy it rather than sitting in a warehouse - but it is not limited, and we do not pretend it is. Made to order and limited edition are different claims, and conflating them is one of the more common quiet dishonesties in this market.
If a product page does not say limited edition, the piece is not limited. We would rather tell you that plainly than let scarcity do sales work it has not earned.
What the certificate is not
It is not a valuation. It does not state what the piece is worth, and we make no claim about what it will be worth later. Anyone in this category who offers you a projected return is selling you something other than art.
It is not an assay certificate. It records that the surface is finished in real 24K gold. It does not represent the work as solid gold, because it is not, and we explain that difference in full elsewhere on this journal.