What this practice is
Papillon Pearl Labs is a provenance intelligence research practice for antique jewelry. It has two sides. The published research — everything in the Library and the methodology — is free and stays free, under CC BY 4.0: you may reuse it, including commercially, with attribution. The consultation layer applies that same methodology to a specific piece, for a fee.
What it will not do
This is not a brokerage, an auction house, or an authentication service in the formal certification sense. It does not sell pieces, does not issue certificates of authenticity, and does not appraise for insurance. Where an engagement needs formal certification, the work is research support supplied to a qualified certifying body, not certification itself.
Neither the Custodian nor the Tool will ever tell you to apply a solvent, scratch, heat or clean a piece. Either may describe what such a test would show and why, and then say the test belongs with a conservator. Damage done to establish a fact destroys the object the fact was about.
Both surfaces are answered by a language model and both state the evidentiary standing of what they say. A reading from one photograph is an inference, not an established fact, and is labelled as one. Nothing either surface produces is a valuation, an appraisal, or advice about whether to buy or sell.
Free use
The Custodian answers 3 questions a day free, whether or not you are signed in. The Tool runs 1 analyses a day without an account and 3 once you sign in — an email address, not a payment. A free analysis is a whole one: the same model, the same corpus lookups, the same report.
A failure on our side does not cost you an analysis. If a request fails for a reason you had no part in, the allowance is given back.
Access tiers
Prices are on the access page and are the figures that will be charged. Two things are worth reading before you buy, and both are shown again at checkout:
Engagements
Fixed fees on the consultation page are the whole fee. One service is a starting fee, and what makes that honest is a guarantee rather than a schedule:
Where work is quoted and invoiced rather than paid up front, the invoice itself repeats the promise, so you are not relying on having remembered this page:
Your data
What is kept, for how long, and who else sees it is set out item by item on the privacy page. Two things there are worth knowing before you use either surface: a question that the Custodian cannot ground is recorded and emailed, carrying your own words, and the daily allowance is counted against your IP address when you are not signed in.
Changes, and getting in touch
If a price changes, the published figure changes with it — the code reads one source, and a test holds the pages and the catalogue to each other, so a page cannot quote a number that is not what would be charged. For anything else, write through the contact page.