Three questions people conflate
Ask three different specialists about the same painting and you'll get three different kinds of answer. One tells you where it has been, one tells you whether it's genuinely by the artist, and one tells you what it's worth. These are provenance, authentication, and appraisal — related, but not interchangeable.
Provenance: the documented history
Provenance is the record of a work's origin and ownership over time — who made it, who has owned it, and where it has been. It is evidence, not opinion: a chain of documented events. A strong provenance makes every other judgement easier and forgery much harder.
Authentication: the judgement of authorship
Authentication is an expert's conclusion about whether a work is genuinely by the artist it's attributed to. It draws on connoisseurship, technical analysis, and provenance together. It is fundamentally a judgement — an informed opinion — not a mechanical fact, which is why the quality of the underlying evidence matters so much.
Appraisal: the estimate of value
Appraisal is a formal estimate of a work's monetary value, usually for insurance, tax, sale, or estate purposes. It's produced by a qualified appraiser and reflects the market at a point in time. Value depends on authenticity and provenance, but it is a separate exercise with its own standards.
How they relate
They stack. Provenance is the evidentiary base; authentication is the expert judgement built partly on that evidence; appraisal is the valuation built on both. Weaken the provenance and everything above it wobbles — which is why documenting history well is the highest-leverage thing you can do for a work.
Where a registry fits
A provenance registry like Attesian sits squarely in the first layer. It creates and safeguards the documented history and issues verifiable certificates — the evidence that authentication and appraisal rely on. It does not, and should not, pretend to be the other two.
What Attesian is not
Attesian is not an authenticator and not an appraiser. It records provenance and authenticity evidence and sets no values; any price guidance elsewhere is an honest range, never a formal appraisal. Expert authentication and valuation remain the work of qualified specialists.