In the world or art and antiques, provenance counts for a lot.
His few supporters argue that dealers are not obligated to disclose an antique's provenance to potential buyers: "Nowhere in the rules of antique furniture does it say you have to tell someone where an object came from.
Dr. Bortolet's laboratory, in an industrial park in Branford, is crammed with files, periodicals, gadgets and artworks of sometimes antique, often questionable, provenance.
This summer, Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H., sold antiques with Johnson provenance, including ceramic flasks in the form of books.
This year marks the first time in memory that garden antiques with a provenance related to Ms. Haupt, who died in 2005 at age 99, will be at the fair, the garden said.
If your piece is a vetted or provenanced antique, consult a professional restoration expert before utilizing these techniques, as any alterations to antiques may result in a reduction of their value.
They know vintages and grapes and earth and humidity as some know baseball statistics or the provenance of antique model trains.
There's no discussion of the provenance of antiques or the quality of a wood grain or a fabric.
An inveterate collector, antiques dealer, bibliophile and provenance fetishist, Mr. Gibbs plainly has mixed emotions about bidding adieu to the house and most of its contents, which Christie's will auction off in 802 lots on Monday and Tuesday in a vast tent on the lawn.
Mr. Parker's enthusiasm for his specialty was described by Rita Reif who wrote in The New York Times in 1972 that tracking the provenance of an antique, or "finding the evidence to clinch a case," was as exciting for him as solving a crime was for Sam Spade.
