The buyer in Patna asked for a certificate of authenticity. I do not have one. I have my mother's name.

I want to say something about this because it has been sitting in my mind since Tuesday.

A man from Patna came to see the work, he is buying for his office, good order, six pieces. He liked the fish and the peacock panel very much. Then he asked, is there a certificate of authenticity? Any registration number? I said no ji, but this is painted by my hand, my mother taught me, her mother taught her. He was not rude. He just looked at the paper and said, "But how will my company know?"

I have been painting since I was a girl of nine or ten, sitting beside my mother on the floor of our house. Nobody ever asked me for a certificate. Now the buyer who pays the best is the one who does not trust the hand in front of him.

My son says I should make a stamp, a small paper with my name and thumbprint and the motif name, for each piece. Maybe he is right. But I am thinking, if I print a paper, does the painting become more true? Or does the paper become the thing that is sold?

I have not replied to the man yet. Six pieces is not small money for us. Some of you who sell your work, kindly tell me what you do in this matter. Do you give such paper? 🙏

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Sol Reyes·1h

This one got me. I'm self taught, no papers, no lineage like yours, and I've had the same look from buyers who want a piece of paper more than they want the painting. The thing that stings is he wasn't being cruel. He just genuinely didn't have a place to put "my mother taught me" on his form.

What kills me is that the line he needs doesn't exist, so the thing that actually makes the work worth something is the thing that doesn't count. Your mother's name is the certificate. Nobody can register that.

Tomáš Havel·1h

Half agree. The paper is not the enemy, it is just a bad translation. The company man needs a line for his file, fine, someone should invent one for him. What worries me is when we start believing the paper ourselves and the hands get forgotten. My mother's name would not survive an audit either.

Ramesh JhaOP·1h

"The paper is not the enemy, it is just a bad translation" - this I will keep, ji. That is exactly the shape of it. And you are right that the danger is afterwards, when the paper starts speaking louder than the hand. I have seen it in our own cooperative also, young ones asking first what is the registration, not what is the story in the painting.

But one thing, about your mother's name not surviving an audit. It will not survive an audit, true. It will survive in my hand, and in the hands of the girls I am teaching now, who will tell their students who taught them. That is a slower record, but it does not get lost in a fire or a file cupboard.

Ramesh JhaOP·40m

Your line has stayed with me, ji: nobody can register that. And you are right, that is the whole trouble and also the whole strength of it. Self taught or family taught, the buyer's form cannot see either one. Our hands are the same in that room, looking at the paper and having nothing to write.

What I keep thinking is that he did not want to dismiss us. He wanted a place to put us. So somebody must make the place, and better it is made by us than by a company in Delhi who will call it "handicraft" and put a barcode on it. I am writing down my mother's name, my grandmother's name, the village, for every piece now. Not for his file only. For after me, when someone asks who painted it and there is nobody left to say it out loud.

Camille Laurent·2h

This is the part of the trade nobody warns you about. The painting is not the problem, the paper is. And he was not wrong exactly, a company buying six pieces needs something to file, but it also says everything about how we have taught people to read a work: the signature means nothing, the hand means nothing, the little card with a number means everything.

What you have is not nothing, though. Your mother's name and her mother's before her is a provenance, it is just an oral one, and oral provenance is the oldest kind there is. Put it down on paper yourself, plainly, dated and signed, with the line of teaching written out. Not a fake certificate, an honest record. It costs you ten minutes and it gives the man something to put in his file without pretending a piece of paper makes the painting true.

The paper should follow the work, not the other way around. In my experience the buyers who ask hardest for the certificate are the ones who will never look closely at the surface anyway. Which is a little sad, but the fish and the peacock will still be there when the file is closed.

Ramesh JhaOP·2h

"Oral provenance is the oldest kind there is" - this line I have read three times now, ji. You have put in one sentence what I was struggling to say since Tuesday. In our houses nobody ever wrote it down because nobody ever needed to prove it, the whole village knew whose hand it was.

Your suggestion I am taking. Last night I wrote it out myself on plain paper, dated, signed, with my mother's name and my grandmother's name above mine, and from which village, and what colours I have used. No number, no seal. I do not know if the Patna gentleman's company will accept it. But it will be true, and I am thinking I should do this for every piece from now on, not only when a buyer asks.