Glossary
Chain of custody
The ordered record of who has held, owned, or exhibited a work over time.
Chain of custody is the unbroken sequence of custodians of a work, from the studio to its current owner. Gaps or contradictions in that chain are exactly what raise doubts about a work's authenticity.
Attesian records custody as an append-only sequence of events. If a link is genuinely unknown, it is shown as a visible gap rather than papered over — an honest record is more useful than a falsely complete one.