The Certificate and the Work

Status: Entered into the House archive
Authority: The House of Shaneela
Prepared by: Samir Al-Dhākir, Archivist of Memory
Provenance: A contemporary record of the certificates accompanying the House’s scented artefacts.

Record

Beside the work,
a written record takes its place.

The fragrance has its composition.
The flacon has its form.

The certificate names
the particular work
to which its words belong.

Their association deserves care.

A flacon rests beside parchment and gold cord upon purple silk.

I. What Is Named

A name identifies the composition.

An edition reference distinguishes
the individual artefact
within the founding whole.

Together, these particulars
allow the written record
to be read beside the work.

The Golden Veil House Accord
continues its thread through fragrance.

The certificate attends
to the identity of the artefact
that carries it.

II. Two Records

The House’s certificate of authenticity
records its declaration
concerning the named work.

The certificate of custodianship
records the person
to whose care it has been entrusted.

One concerns the artefact’s identity.

The other records
a relationship of keeping.

Read together,
they preserve particulars
that memory alone
may cease to hold clearly.

III. Keeping the Association

Let the record remain
associated with the work.

Let its particulars
remain legible.

A name recalled imperfectly,
a date left uncertain,
a reference separated from its object
can make a history harder to follow.

Care extends
to the words accompanying the vessel.

In preserving them,
the custodian helps retain
an intelligible account
of what has been entrusted.

Closing Record

The flacon carries
a material expression of the Realm.

The certificate carries
the House’s written account
of the work and its entrusting.

Let each be kept
with regard for the other.

So that, in years to come,
the work may still be named,
and its recorded beginning
may still be read.

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Suggested Reading Path

Thirty (opens in a new tab)

On Custodianship (opens in a new tab)

References

Getty, Categories for the Description of Works of Art, “Ownership/Collecting History,” Section 23.
Provides a framework for recording a work’s provenance and ownership history. It supplies context for preserving the association between an object and its documentary record. Read the guidance (opens in a new tab).

This manuscript describes the House’s own certificates through its archival language. The external reference provides documentation context; it does not authenticate or endorse the House’s artefacts or certificates.