From the Archive
Heritage extracts
For pieces the house made for private clients before 1979, the Archive will prepare an extract from the Register of Provenance and the makers’ notebooks, signed by the Registrar.
What an extract contains
An extract is a transcription, on the house’s paper, of every entry concerning a piece: its entry in the Register, the pages of the makers’ notebooks that describe its making, the letters exchanged with its first keeper and the record of every service since. Where the Archive holds drawings of the piece, a copy of the principal drawing is included. A typical extract runs to between six and twenty pages.
Who may ask
The present keeper of the piece, or a museum, auction house or court acting with the keeper’s written consent. The Archive will not prepare an extract for a piece whose keeper it cannot establish, and will tell the person who asked why.
How to ask
Write to the Archive at provenance@rosenassociation.org with a description of the piece, photographs of any marks on it and the name in which it was first bought, if you know it. The Archive will reply within the week to say whether it holds a record, and the extract follows within six weeks. Extracts are charged at a fixed fee of $340, which the Council has not changed since 2009.
What the Archive will not do
It will not value a piece, authenticate a piece it did not make, or prepare an extract for a piece made by another house, however closely it resembles ours. A piece that resembles a Rosen piece and has no record in the Register is not a Rosen piece.