Certificates & provenance
A record that outlives the sale.
Every artwork you register gets a certificate of authenticity and a permanent provenance record. It is created when you catalogue the work, it updates itself each time the work changes hands, and it stays with the artwork rather than with you.
Register the work, and attest it
You add the work and confirm you made it. That confirmation is the thing the certificate records: your declaration as the artist, made at a known date, stored where it can be checked later.
Register an artwork
The certificate is issued
A certificate of authenticity is generated immediately, with its own reference number. It names the work, the artist and the facts of the piece, and it is marked artist-attested, because that is exactly what it is.
Certificate of authenticity
Solitude I
Eleanor Hart · 2026
✓ Artist-attested
Verify at curatedopus.com/v/CO-2026-00147
The PDF is private: only you, and later the collector who owns the work, can download it.
The sale writes itself into the record
When the work sells through OPUS, the record does the paperwork. Ownership transfers to the collector, the certificate passes to them, and the sale is added to the provenance as a dated event.
Provenance
Anyone can check it
Every record has a public address. A collector, a gallery, an insurer or a future buyer can open it and see the work, its details and its history, without an account and without asking you.
Search & Verify
Each record also has its own link, curatedopus.com/v/CO-2026-00147, which you can send to anyone.
Your dashboard will also generate a QR code for a work you have listed, sized for the back of a canvas, a wall label or a fair booth.
It resells, and the history grows
The collector owns the artwork and its record. If they sell it again through OPUS, the next owner is added to the provenance, the certificate passes on, and your 4% royalty is paid automatically.
A history that can travel
Most work sold by independent artists carries nothing. A receipt, maybe a signed card, sometimes only a message thread. The artwork is real and the sale was real, but there is nothing durable tying the two together, and the further the work travels from the studio the less anyone can say about it with confidence.
That matters more than it sounds. Works without a record often end up in storage, insured for nothing in particular, until their histories are forgotten entirely. Not because they lacked value, but because nobody wrote anything down.
A record changes what the artwork can do next. It can be resold with confidence, insured against something specific, lent, gifted or inherited, and each of those is easier because the next person does not have to take anyone’s word for it.
It changes what a first sale means for the artist, too. Every recorded sale adds to a documented history: what you have made, who owns it, and what your work has actually sold for.
What this is, and what it isn’t
A certificate is only worth what it honestly claims. Here is exactly what a Curated OPUS record does and does not do.
What it does
- Records the artist’s own declaration of authorship, at a known date, in a form anyone can look up.
- Keeps the artwork’s details, certificate and ownership history together and public.
- Transfers to the collector automatically when the work sells through OPUS, with no paperwork.
- Adds every later OPUS sale to the same history, permanently.
- Stays live and verifiable forever. A record belongs to the artwork, not to a subscription: it does not expire, is never deleted, and keeps resolving even if you cancel, pause, or never subscribe at all.
What it doesn’t do
- It is not authentication by a third party. Curated OPUS does not inspect, appraise or authenticate artwork. The certificate records what the artist attests, and says so on its face.
- It is not a valuation, and it does not make a work worth more.
- It cannot record a sale that happens somewhere else. A private or auction sale outside OPUS is not added to the history unless the owner records it.
- There is no blockchain involved, and there never will be. It is a database record with a public address, which is what makes it checkable.
Register one work and see.
£5 per artwork, or included on the Unlimited plan. The certificate and provenance record are issued immediately.
Or look at a real example record first.