What to know before you call us.

No. Our analysis protocol involves neither sampling nor contact, and the radiation we use stays below what a work receives from exhibition lighting.

If a question cannot be settled without sampling, we tell you. A micro-sample may then be taken to carry the analysis further, but only at your written request, never on our own initiative: it is located, documented and kept to the strict minimum.

No, never. We measure material properties. Attribution is for experts, artist committees and, in a dispute, the court.

Our data supports them; it does not replace them.

No — and be wary of anyone who says they can.

We can establish that a work is materially incompatible with the period or workshop claimed; that is a solid result. We can establish that it is compatible; that is a useful result, but it is not proof of authenticity.

In the great majority of cases, no: we come to the work. It is the first of our design choices.

Some specific analyses require the laboratory; we say so before the intervention.

The raw data is written to LTO tape, in two copies held in two separate locations, with a thirty-year read guarantee. Those tapes are never connected.

The owner's identity and the location of the work are never disclosed.

You may ask for access to your data, or for its destruction, at any time.

Because neither half is sufficient on its own.

The copy delivered to you is encrypted and deliberately incomplete: it holds only four fifths of the data blocks. The remaining fifth stays with us. A copy stolen from you is unreadable; our server, were it compromised, would yield fragments that mean nothing without your share.

Access to the viewer is opened with a physical security key, which you hold. Without it, the interface stays shut.

No. Every image on this site illustrates a specimen file.

The works we analyse and the files we produce are not published. Confidentiality is owed to the owner, and it admits no commercial exception.

They are built to be: findings and interpretation kept separate, protocols documented, raw data retained and open to re-examination.

Admissibility and the weight given to any item of evidence are ultimately for the court seised of the matter.

Mainly paintings, drawings and works on paper. Our modalities also apply to sculpture and objects, with protocols adapted to the geometry.

Write to us about particular cases; we would rather say so before accepting a commission.

Ten modalities acquired on a single bench: high-resolution visible imaging, multiband imaging on a filter wheel, hyperspectral imaging from the visible into the near infrared, short-wave infrared, ultraviolet fluorescence, X-radiography, X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectrometry, Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry, laser profilometry and microscopy.

The list is not the point — these techniques exist elsewhere. The point is that here they share one coordinate system, referenced to glass scales to within a micrometre. A chemical signature is therefore located at the exact place where the radiograph shows a reworking and the relief shows impasto. It is that coincidence which demonstrates something, not the isolated measurement.

Yes, and it is often where the firmest answers are found.

For canvases: thread counting, weave density and thread angle, cusping, all derived from radiography and raking light. Two canvases cut from the same bolt carry the same weave signature — a link that depends on no one's judgement.

For panels: wood species, conversion and grain orientation, and the composition of added materials — glues, fills, consolidants, conservation treatments — by reflection infrared spectrometry and by Raman, without sampling. Dendrochronology is carried out on request, from ring measurements.

Textile fibres, finally: some can be identified without taking anything — under a binocular loupe, with directed lighting and reflection infrared spectrometry, which is often enough to distinguish the main families. Where that precision falls short, a micro-sample allows the identification and the analysis to be carried further: it is taken only at your request, never on our own initiative.

A work of ordinary format is acquired in a day on site. The report follows within the timescale agreed in the quotation.

By the commission, the dimensions of the work and the place of intervention. A detailed quotation always follows an initial discussion.

Particular terms are available for collections and multi-year campaigns.