Fossil & Antique
Authentication at Fossil & Antique is not a step in our fulfilment process — it is the business. Every specimen in the catalogue has been handled, examined, and signed off by a member of our in-house specialist team before it has been photographed, listed, or priced.
The antiques trade has long tolerated a polite fiction — that a beautiful object is, somehow, a sufficient document of itself. We do not work that way. A nineteenth-century walnut cabinet without a traceable chain of ownership is, in our ledger, an unregulated object. A Moroccan trilobite of remarkable colour and form, offered without quarry records and preparation history, is a curio — not a specimen. The difference matters because the price difference is real, and because our buyers are people who plan to live with, insure, and eventually bequeath what they acquire from us.
We built the company around that distinction. Our dealers agree, in writing, to a standard of disclosure stricter than any auction-house condition report. Our in-house team of seven certified geologists and three accredited antique specialists (members of the ASA and NAVA) reads every consignment before it is listed. And in 2019 we published, openly, the checklist we use — now adopted by more than 1,400 auction houses worldwide — so that our buyers, and our competitors, could hold us to it.
Henry Marchand, Founder & Head of Authentication
A specimen passes through three sequential gates before it can be priced for the catalogue. Each gate is signed by a named specialist. None of the three can be waived, expedited, or substituted by a dealer self-certification.
Every consignment is opened in our Lyon conservation studio. A certified geologist or accredited antique specialist examines the object under ≥10× magnification, recording tool marks, restoration, matrix composition, preparation technique, and any feature inconsistent with the declared period or locality. Where the object is a fossil, the specialist checks the diagnostic morphology against current peer-reviewed literature; where it is an antique, the joinery, hardware, patina, and timber or metal composition are tested against period-specific reference collections.
The specialist then builds a written provenance chain, working backwards from the current dealer through every prior owner of record. For a fossil this means quarry location, preparation laboratory, the collector who first acquired it, any auction or exhibition history, and any prior published references. For an antique it means maker or workshop, original commission or pattern book reference, subsequent ownership, conservation history, and any period documentation that can be produced. Where the chain is incomplete or relies on oral assertion, the piece is either re-consigned to a dealer who can document it further, or withdrawn from the catalogue.
Once examination and provenance are closed, a senior specialist — never the same person who performed the examination — reviews the file in full and, if satisfied, issues the Certificate of Authenticity. The certificate carries the specialist's signature, ASA or NAVA accreditation number where applicable, the date of issue, the Examination Record and Provenance Dossier references, and a high-resolution catalogue photograph of the specific object as shipped. The certificate ships with the piece, in a printed sleeve, and is archived against the buyer's name for the life of our company.
Authentication is performed by named, accountable professionals — not by a black-box scoring algorithm, and not by the listing dealer. Below: the four credential groups whose signatures appear on certificates issued by the house in the past twelve months.
7 in-house specialists
Each holds a postgraduate qualification in earth sciences (MSc or PhD) from a recognised European university, with a minimum of six years' field or curatorial experience before joining the house. Three are members of the Geological Society of London's Chartered Geologist scheme.
Signs: Certificates for all fossil and mineral specimens.
3 accredited members
Members in good standing of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers, and the National Antique & Art Dealers Association of America (NAVA). Collectively sixty-one years of specialist trade experience.
Signs: Certificates for furniture, decorative objects, and antique curios.
2011 year founded
Henry Marchand — geologist-turned-dealer — personally countersigns every certificate issued for a piece priced above five thousand pounds, and reviews the examination file for any consignment offered by a dealer new to the network.
Signs: All pieces above £5,000 and all first-listing dealers.
1,400+ auction houses using it
The first open-source fossil authentication checklist, published by the house in 2019 and now standard reference material at auction rooms across Europe and North America. Available on request to any dealer, institution, or private collector.
A complete press archive and copies of relevant certificates are available on written request to the concierge desk.
Each study documents how a recent acquisition moved from consignment to listed catalogue, with the specific tests applied and the decisions recorded.
Hakel, Lebanon · Upper Cenomanian, circa 95 million years
One historical repair to the dorsal margin was found and disclosed in the catalogue entry; the piece was listed at a price adjusted accordingly and sold to an institutional buyer in Frankfurt within nine days.
London workshop · circa 1870–1885
Forty-seven of the original fifty-four labelled glass jars present and matched; seven replacement jars were disclosed and photographed individually in the listing. Sold to an interior-design client in Antwerp for £8,200.
Baltic coast, near Palanga · Eocene, circa 44 million years
Listed at €14,400; acquired by a member of the Natural History Museum's visiting fellows' programme for use as a comparative reference specimen. Full dossier, including FTIR trace, is appended to the permanent archive.