Guide
Stories, notes and forensic evidence: what to record and who sees it
A piece on Veriroo can carry three quite different kinds of note, and they answer different questions for different people. Knowing which is which saves putting the right thing in the wrong place.
The artist’s story
What the work is, what you were doing, why it looks the way it does. It sits on the piece and it is one of the things a record needs before it can reach full provenance and support a certificate.
It is also the part collectors actually read. A record with dimensions and materials tells somebody what they are buying; the story is why they want it.
Work in progress notes
Dated photographs and written records showing the piece being made. A phone shot of the canvas at three stages counts, and it is worth more than it looks.
This is evidence that you created the work, made at the only time it can be made, which is while you are making it. Collectors and verifiers trust pieces with that trail behind them noticeably more, because it is the one kind of provenance that cannot be assembled after the fact.
Mark an entry Public to have it count toward the provenance score and show on the verify page. Leave it private and it is still yours, still dated, still there if it is ever needed.
Owner notes
For whoever holds the piece now, artist or collector. Where it hangs, what it cost, when it was cleaned, what the framer did, who you bought it from.
Most of this is private and should stay that way. Some of it is provenance: an exhibition, a restoration, a sale at auction. You choose what is visible, and a note that is public becomes part of what the next owner inherits.
The habit worth forming is writing the boring ones down. Nobody regrets a dated line saying which framer re-stretched a canvas in 2027, and nobody can reconstruct it later.
Forensic evidence, and why it is different
Forensic records are close detail of the object itself: the kind of thing the person who made it can photograph and nobody working from a picture would know to reproduce.
Forensic evidence stays private to the artist, permanently, including after the piece is sold. The new owner does not get it, and neither does anybody browsing the record.
That looks odd until you consider what it is for. Its value lies entirely in the fact that only one person holds it, and it keeps that value only while that stays true. Publish it and it stops being evidence. Pass it to each new owner and within three sales it has stopped being evidence more slowly.
So it stays where it was made, with the maker. What happens if it is ever needed is a conversation with the artist at the time, not a door left standing open in the meantime. It is the one part of a record deliberately kept from the person who owns the work, and the reason is that it protects them.
Why you cannot simply delete an image
Because a record whoever currently holds the piece can edit is not worth anything to the next person.
The main image is the permanent primary record of the artwork, and a provenance trail that can be quietly revised is a story rather than evidence. That is the whole argument of the platform applied where it is least convenient, which is the only place the argument counts.
Removing an item from your collection changes what you see in your account. It does not erase the underlying verification record, and it is not meant to.
Add to a piece
A few dated notes now are worth more than a reconstruction in thirty years.