Tracing your treasures

A new technique to identify objects of art and protect against illegal trafficking of cultural heritage will be foolproof, according to a University of Southampton researcher.

FING-ART-PRINT, a 2.5-year project funded by the European Commission, undertaken by a consortium of European partners, aims to provide a means of uniquely identifying art and cultural objects.

According to Dr. Kirk Martinez at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS), such a non-contact system has never been developed in this way before. ‘We are developing a system which is very much foolproof’, he said.

The system is based on the owner of the work selecting, for example, one square centimetre. The texture and colour of that square centimetre are then measured on a micrometer scale, and put into a database. Objects and collections which are fingerprinted can then be easily identified and traced when on loan or in transport.