Not entirely in agreement with your definition of provenance. I believe provenance is a known history of ownership, and not necessarily anything to do with originality of parts.

Still, your post does provide a basis for thinking about some new words to define builds based upon levels of ‘originality’.. to avoid misrepresentation in either direction. I like Andy’s ‘re-creation’ for the likes of P9374..

Provenance, from the French provenir, “to come from”, refers to the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object.[1] The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, paleontology, archives, manuscripts, printed books, and science and computing. The primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object or entity is normally to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production or discovery, by establishing, as far as practicable, its later history, especially the sequences of its formal ownership, custody, and places of storage. The practice has a particular value in helping authenticate objects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provenance

The debate resolves around three terms all trying to establish the same thing with slightly different words, its originality, it authenticity and its provenance, ie where did it come from, where has it been and what has it done.

Exactly like the art world, an objects value can vary greatly due to its provenance and authenticity.

Debates on this topic get very heated in the warbird world, where to some, anything with an elliptical wing and a roundel is a real spitfire, regardless of its “newness”, pointing to the wartime practice of swapping parts during combat repair or overhauls, alternatively the grandfathers Broom argument is trotted out that replacement of the handle and latter the head long after grand-dad has passed, still results in the finished product being a family heirloom.

Unfortunately most debates on this topic in forums such as these degenerate into slanging matches and loose all logic of debate.

A restoration is normally assumed to be a process of renovating an existing object, rather than creating one, however scarcity of complete airframes sitting around waiting to be restored has led to the process of acquiring original parts from disparate sources and airframes, and restoring them back into a single identity normally sourced from the fuselage, ie T-6s, Tigermoths and Pipercubs built up from a collection of surplus parts.

A recreation is a term gaining favour and purports to retain some level of provenance through use of some original parts including even the mere existence of a data plate, and therefore claim authenticity and identity.

A self confessed reproduction, (the recently built Me-262s, FW-190s, Yaks, Oscars and F3F’s) happily acknowledge they are new constructions to an original design or closely following an original design, but make no attempt to claim authenticity or provenance and therefore identity.

A replica (at least in the aircraft world) is at worst considered to be an external approximation of the appearance, but totally different to the original design/construction/powerplant,or even size, the Tora Tora Tora zeros being a good example. Its a term that was previously applied to anything not was not a manufactured original, but there are some past outcomes that are better described as reproductions than replicas given their duplication of the design and construction.

One day there will be some standards adopted and accepted in relation to aircraft, it will most likely come from the museum world, taken up by the aircraft brokers and sales agents, and eventually be accepted and adopted by “most” but not “all” of the warbird fraternity.

However there will still be those who claim “it doesn’t really matter” (on the basis those in the “know” – know the real origins of the aircraft they buy) or “it threatens the future of the warbird market” by undervaluing the products of such recreations/reproductions/restorations, and then there will still be those owners/rebuilders who will claim their particular object slips across the boundary of restoration/recreation/reproduction as they see fit and to their advantage. (and of course we all “know” who they are – so it really “doesn’t matter”)

It was refreshing to see the openness of a Canadian collection who recently discovered the identity of their Spitfire was not as it seemed, and here there is no dispute that the spitfire is an original production spitfire (albeit unrestored and in poor condition) but its provenance assumed one identity, and the correction of identity changes its provenance and therefore relevance to the Canadian collection. ie an example of provenance having some value, and why it should be scrutinised, and not simply permitted to be claimed by those wishing to ascribe value through it.

Regards

Mark Pilkington