How to catalogue your artwork

For most artists a catalogue starts as a list: what you've made, how big it is, what it's made of, where it is and what it costs. With that list you can answer a collector the same day, check what a gallery says it sold, and show years later where a work has been.

1. Pick one place for it

Whatever you use, keep every work in one place, with one record each. A spreadsheet is fine for the first few dozen. It starts to creak when you want photos next to each row, editions where selling one print changes what's left, and a history of where each work has been. What doesn't work is a file per show or a folder per year, because the same painting ends up in three places with three different prices.

2. Number everything

Give each work an inventory number. It's how you tell two untitled blue paintings of the same size apart. A plain sequence (0001, 0002) is fine, or put the year first (2026-014). Don't reuse a number, even for a work that's been destroyed. Pencil it on the back of the work or the stretcher, and use it in the file names of its photos.

3. Write down the basics

• Title, or "Untitled" plus something that tells it apart.
• Date: the year you finished it, or a range.
• Medium: the materials and what they're on, the way you'd put it on a caption, like "Oil on linen".
• Dimensions: height, then width, then depth, with the unit. Note the framed size separately.
• Edition, if there's more than one: its number, the edition size and any proofs.
• Price, and the currency.
• Status: available, reserved, sold, with a gallery, on loan.
• Where it is right now.

There's more you can add later. We go through every field in what goes in an artwork inventory record.

4. Photograph it while you still have it

Shoot it straight on, in soft, even light, without cropping the edges. Then a few details: the surface, the signature, and the back, where the labels and inscriptions are. Keep the original files at full size and name them with the inventory number. Once a work has left the studio, getting a good photo of it is a lot harder.

5. Start with the studio, then work backwards

Do what's in front of you first. You can measure and photograph it today, and it's what you're most likely to sell next. Then go back through old invoices, emails, gallery statements and exhibition lists for the work that's already gone. If you don't know something, leave it blank and add a note rather than guess. You can always fill it in later.

6. Keep its story with it

Every time something happens to a work, note it against the work with the date: sold, and to whom; sent to a gallery; lent to a show; moved into storage. Over the years that becomes its provenance, and collectors, insurers and anyone writing about your work will ask for it.

7. Keep it up to date

Add new work when it's finished, and photograph it before it goes anywhere. Change the status the day something sells or goes out. And once a year, export the lot, images included, and keep a copy somewhere else.