# Reading a Catalogue Entry as a Contract > Iconotheca has covered what the cataloguing terms mean; this reads the same entry as a contract, where the warranty covers only the capitalised first line and the remedy is rescission. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/reading-a-catalogue-entry-as-a-contract/ ## Key points - Christie's warrants only the information shown in capitals on the first line of the lot description, and expressly not other information even where it is also capitalised. - Provenance, literature, exhibition history, condition, medium and dimensions sit outside the warranty at both major houses. - The warranty excludes de-attributions caused by developing scholarship, which is the most common way an attribution actually fails. - The sole remedy is rescission and refund of the purchase price in the currency of the sale, with no damages, interest or costs, so a warranty claim returns the money of the year you paid it. ## The warranty has a typographic boundary, and almost nothing is inside it ## What is warranted is a negative, not a positive ## The exclusions carry the weight ## Qualified headings put the lot outside the warranty altogether ## As is, and the condition report as a courtesy ## The remedy is a refund of a number that is larger than the hammer A catalogue entry is two documents printed as one. The scholarship in the body is the reason to buy and carries no contractual weight whatever. The capitalised line at the top is the whole of the promise, and it promises only that the object is not a forgery of the thing named, for five years, to the original buyer, subject to a list of exclusions that removes the commonest cause of failure. The correct habit is to read the entry twice, once as an argument about a work of art and once as a schedule of allocated risk, and to notice that almost everything persuasive in the first reading has been carefully placed outside the second. ## Questions **If the provenance in the catalogue turns out to be wrong, is there a remedy under the warranty?** Not under the authenticity warranty. Sotheby's expressly disclaims any warranty as to the correctness of catalogue descriptions of provenance and exhibition history, and Christie's limits its warranty to the capitalised first line. A false provenance may give rise to other claims depending on the facts and the jurisdiction, but it is outside the instrument the catalogue itself provides. **Does a new technical finding reopen a lot sold years earlier?** Usually not. Both houses may reject a claim where the only means of showing the lot was a counterfeit is a process that was not generally available or accepted at the date of sale, or was unreasonably expensive, impractical or damaging. A method developed after the sale is therefore likely to fall inside the exclusion rather than inside the warranty. **Can the warranty be passed to a subsequent owner?** No. Both warranties are given solely to the original buyer named on the invoice and cannot be transferred. The claimant must also still own the lot free of third-party claims at the time of the claim. A work resold once has no warranty attached to it at all, which is a fact worth pricing when buying at second hand from a private seller. **What is the practical checklist before bidding?** Read the first line and establish whether any part of it is qualified; treat everything below it as unwarranted research; obtain an independent condition examination rather than relying on the house report; and compute the purchase price as hammer plus premium plus tax plus any resale royalty, because that is the number you owe and the only number a successful warranty claim will return. ## Sources - [1] Christie's Hong Kong Limited, 'Conditions of Sale', 8 February 2022: paragraph A3 (condition and condition reports), paragraph E2 (authenticity warranty, qualified headings, remedy), the glossary definition of 'authentic', and 'Explanation of Cataloguing Practice'. - [2] Sotheby's, 'Conditions of Business for Buyers, New York' (buyer's premium effective 17 February 2025): Condition 3(k) disclaimer of warranties, Condition 15 Authenticity Guarantee, and the definitions of Buyer's Premium and Purchase Price. - [3] Carlie Porterfield, 'Sotheby's hikes buyer's premiums as auction houses test new fee structures', The Art Newspaper, 17 February 2026, for the rates effective 13 February 2026 and Christie's September 2025 structure. - [4] The Value, 'At US$236.3m, Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer becomes the second most expensive work ever auctioned', November 2025, for the hammer price of US$205,000,000 and premium-inclusive US$236,360,000. - [5] Sotheby's, 'Historic Night at Sotheby's Continues as White-Glove Leonard A. Lauder Collection Totals $527.5m', press release, 18 November 2025.