Contact the editors of Go-Star Antiquing & Collecting

The editorial address

Messages for the site go to [email protected]. The address is read by the editorial team, and editorial responsibility for the site lies with Ellen Hartwell, editor. Messages can be short and in plain English; no form or special format is needed.

Three kinds of message are most useful. The first is a correction: a misspelled name, a wrong year, a maker or mark described incorrectly, or a price given with the wrong date. The second is a question about something an article says, for example which period a mark belongs to or which sale a figure comes from. The third is a comment on an article from someone with first-hand knowledge of the subject, such as a collector of the objects a guide describes.

What the address cannot help with

The site is a set of articles, not a shop or an appraisal service. The editors cannot value an object from a photograph or a description, and they do not buy, sell or broker antiques. The articles explain how marks, materials and construction help identify a piece, and the Antique Detective page gathers those methods in one place, but a valuation needs a qualified appraiser who can examine the object.

The site is also independent of the people and organizations it writes about. It cannot pass messages to the collectors, artists, actors or families named in the articles, and it cannot answer on behalf of museums, estates, auction houses or companies. There are no subscriptions, printed issues, advertising packages or back numbers to order.

Questions about a family piece are a common case. The editors cannot say whether an inherited object is genuine or what it is worth, but the guides on the site often explain where to look first: the mark on the base of a cup, the joints of a drawer, the seam on a bottle. Those clues are a good starting point before the piece goes to an appraiser.

Requests of that kind will not receive an answer, so it saves time to send them elsewhere from the start.

How to send a correction

A good correction can be checked in a few minutes. It helps to include four things. First, the address of the page, for example /antiquing/royal-bayreuth-porcelain.htm, so the right article can be found. Second, the exact sentence that is wrong, copied from the page. Third, what is correct, stated in a sentence or two. Fourth, where the correct information comes from: a book, a catalogue, a museum record, a mark on an object, or the collector’s own account.

Corrections about marks and makers are easier to confirm with a clear photograph of the mark, and corrections about sale prices are easier to confirm with the name of the auction house or the date of the listing. Readers who knew the subject of a profile personally are welcome to say so, and the editors will take that into account.

What happens after a message arrives

Each correction is checked against a source before anything on the page changes. When it is confirmed, the article is corrected. When the sources disagree, the article may be reworded to say less, which is the site’s general rule for facts that cannot be settled.

Messages are kept only as long as they are needed to deal with the matter they raise. The privacy notice explains how email is handled, and the about page describes how the articles are dated and checked in the first place.