Certificate of authenticity

A certificate of authenticity, or COA, is the gallery’s written assurance that a print is what it claims to be. The certificate records the key facts: the artwork’s title, the year of printing, the impression number and edition size for limited editions, the artist’s name, the medium and dimensions, and the gallery’s signature or seal.

The purpose is provenance. If you ever sell the print, insure it, or pass it down, the COA is the documentary trail that connects this specific impression back to a known source. Without one, the print is functionally anonymous — beautiful but unverifiable.

Two formats are in common use. A physical paper COA is the traditional format — a printed or hand-written card that travels with the artwork. A digital COA is the modern equivalent: a permanent URL the gallery hosts, with the same information machine-readable and timestamped. Digital certificates are harder to forge (you can’t tamper with the gallery’s records) and harder to lose, but they depend on the gallery staying online.

At Clark & Darcey we issue a digital certificate for every limited edition print. The certificate is published at a permanent URL the day the print is signed and shipped, and records the artwork, the impression number, the edition size, the year, and the original buyer’s name. Future owners can confirm provenance by visiting the URL; we’ll continue to host the records indefinitely.

Open editions don’t carry COAs — they’re not built around the scarcity claim a certificate is designed to authenticate.