LEXICONDesign and market
Provenance
Also called: Documentation, certificate of authenticity
The recorded history of an object: what it is, what it was, who made it and when. For work built from salvaged material it is the substance of the claim rather than a formality.
What can be established for a salvaged component
Four things are genuinely determinable: the component type, from its geometry and function; the machine class it came from, from dimensions and mounting details; the approximate service period, from wear depth and corrosion character; and the material class, from hardness testing and where necessary spark or spectrographic checks. Each should be stated with the basis on which it was determined.
What cannot, and why it matters
A specific machine serial number is almost never recoverable, because components are routinely swapped between machines and identification plates live on the chassis, not the wear parts. The precise site is not recoverable either unless the part came from an identified operator with records. Any certificate offering all of this for a generic salvaged part is describing traceability the salvage chain does not support — and a document that states its own limits is more trustworthy than one that does not.
