The laboratory comes to the work.
IDMETRY measures the material of works of art without ever touching them, and keeps for each one a scientific fingerprint that can be verified over time.
Is this the same work, and in what condition?
A work changes hands, crosses a border, comes back from an exhibition, leaves a restorer's studio. At every step, the same question returns.
Today it is answered with photographs, paper certificates and memory. Three supports that get lost, get forged and get contested.
We answer it with measurement.
The scientific fingerprint of every workRecognising a work among all others — no marking, no label, no chip.ART-DNA® →
Structural and chromatic condition reportKnowing what has moved between two dates, and by how much.ART-CHK® →
Scientific analysis for expertiseIdentifying materials and interventions, without sampling.ART-LAB® →
Scientific evidence for the courtsTraceable findings, built to be tested by the other side.ART-FOR® →
Augmented scientific visualisationSeeing every modality of a single work in one register.ART-SAV® →
We do not touch the work.
No sampling. No contact. No material removed, added or displaced. The radiation we use stays below what a work receives from gallery lighting.
This constraint is not a limit we put up with. It is the rule the whole instrument was designed around.
What we do not do.
Three things, and we would rather say them first.
We do not attribute.
We will never say that a work is by an artist's hand. We give experts, artist committees and courts the material findings on which they will base their judgement.
We do not value.
The value of a work cannot be measured. It is not our trade.
We do not restore.
We document a condition; we do not act on it. Our independence depends on that.
Owners' identities and the location of works do not leave the laboratory.
The reference archive of your analyses is never online: two copies on LTO tape, held in two separate locations, in bank vaults, with a thirty-year read guarantee.
The copy you receive is encrypted and deliberately incomplete — one fifth of its blocks is missing, and stays with us. Neither a copy stolen from you, nor our server were it compromised, can be read on its own.
We hold no interest in the sale of the works we analyse, nor in their restoration.
Tell us about your works.
Describe what you need. We will tell you what can be measured, what cannot, and what it involves.