For collectors
Your collection, known in every detail. Seen by no one else.
For private, family and corporate collections: where every work is, every paper it will ever need, what it is insured for, and a record that outlives all of us. On your own server, for your eyes only.
Where every work is.
At home, in storage, on loan to a museum, at the framer’s. Every work has its place, and when it moves, its place moves with it: who took it, when, and when it comes back.
You stop keeping a collection in your head, or in a spreadsheet nobody else understands.
Every paper a work will ever need.
The invoice, the certificate, the condition reports, the loan agreements, each valuation: they gather around the work over the years, each with its date and where it came from.
So the day you want to sell it, lend it or pass it on, nothing has to be looked for. That record is the work’s provenance, and provenance is part of what it is worth.
Insured at today’s value.
Every valuation is kept with its date and its source, so you always know what a work was last valued at and when, and a policy’s renewal date sits with the works it covers, where you will see it.
The Spine keeps valuations; it doesn’t make them. That stays with your appraiser.
Seen by no one else.
Your collection lives on your own server, in your own database. Nothing is published unless you decide it, and a public face for the collection, if you ever want one, comes from the same records.
If you turn on AI to phrase its sentences, no name ever leaves: the model sees “a work” and “a collector”, never which. Security and your data.
Lend it, consign it, on your terms.
When a museum asks for a loan or a gallery takes a work to sell, it travels with its papers: the agreement, the insurance, the condition on departure and on return. You see every step, and nothing leaves without your yes.
For the ones who come after.
A collection is often passed on, and its memory with it. The whole archive can be exported whenever you want, in open formats that anyone can read without us: every work, where it has been, and every paper behind it.
What you built stays understandable, by your family, your executors or whoever you choose.
And if your gallery uses The Spine.
You get a desk of your own there. The works the gallery chooses for you arrive with their images, their facts and, where the gallery can show it, their price. You answer from the same place, and every conversation stays in its own thread. Your desk needs no instructions: one sentence, one button, and nothing to get lost in.
The works of yours they look after, and the ones you lend them, are there too: where each one is, when it travels, and when it comes back.
Everything a collection runs on.
What other software does, The Spine does too, in its own way, and in one place.
- Collection recordsEvery work with its images, facts and texts.
- LocationsWhere each work is, and where it has been.
- PapersInvoices, certificates and agreements, filed on their work.
- ValuationsEach one with its date and its source.
- InsurancePolicies and their dates, with the works they cover.
- Condition reportsOn departure and on return, with photographs.
- LoansTo museums and exhibitions, with your yes.
- ConsignmentsTo galleries, with their terms.
- PeopleArtists, advisers, galleries, framers and couriers.
- HistoryEvery change with its name and its date.
- ExportThe whole archive, readable without us.
- A public faceOnly if you want one, from the same records.
Every collection is installed and set up by hand, in confidence. How we set you up.