The Certificate of Return

The record is the proof.

Anything can be said to have been to space. A Nostimere object can prove it. Each one comes home with a Certificate of Return, the document a partner keeps beside the object for as long as the object exists.

Nostimere

Certificate of Return

No. [0001] · Specimen

The House certifies that the object described below was carried to orbit and returned to earth on the mission named, and that every fact recorded here was observed and logged by the House.

Object: [Object, edition and number]
Partner house: [Partner house]
Mission: [Space Phoenix mission]
Departed: [Day Month Year, hh:mm:ss UTC]
Returned: [Day Month Year, hh:mm:ss UTC]
Days in orbit: [00]
Mass at departure: [0.00 kg]
Mass at return: [0.00 kg]
Recovery: [Recovery site]

νόστιμον ἦμαρ

nostimon ēmar · the day of return

For the House

Specimen. Shown at reduced size; the certificate is 11 × 8.5 in.

What it records

Exact facts, nothing rounded.

A certificate makes no claim the House could not defend. Every line is observed, logged and kept.

The object: What was flown, its edition and its number, as the partner house names it.
The mission: The Space Phoenix mission that carried it, and the days it spent in orbit.
The dates: Departure and return, written out in full, to the second, in UTC.
The mass: Weighed before departure and after return, to the hundredth of a kilogram.
The recovery: Where the object came back to earth and was taken into the House’s care.
The number: A unique number that ties the certificate to the House archive.

How it is made

Made to outlast the object it describes.

A craftsman feeding a cotton sheet into a letterpress, with gold foil and the brass Nostimere plate — In the press · concept

The sheet

600 gsm cotton, in Historic Marble

11 × 8.5 inches, heavy enough to stand on its own.

The printing

Letterpress in Nostimere Blue

Pressed into the sheet, so the record can be felt as well as read.

The seal

Struck in gold foil

The one round mark the House uses, kept for what has returned.

The archive

Kept for a century, open to verification.

The House keeps a copy of every certificate and the record behind it. A collector, an auction house or an auditor can ask the House to confirm a certificate by its number, decades from now.

The object is the partner’s. The return, and the record of it, is the House’s.

Numbered archive drawers beside a desk with a Certificate of Return in a leather folio under a brass lamp — The House archive · concept

Every certificate begins with a conversation.

The House works with a small number of partners on each mission, by appointment.

Request an appointment