Sell a pot at a craft fair and the transaction ends at the stall. Sell a painting at auction years later and, in the UK, the law disagrees: the artist is owed a percentage of that resale. The Artist's Resale Right — droit de suite in the continental tradition — has applied in Britain since 2006, phased in fully by 2014, and it is one of the quiet pillars of artists' income. For makers whose work appreciates, it is worth understanding precisely, because the obligations fall on the seller, not the artist.
What is the Artist's Resale Right?
The right gives artists — and, since the phased extensions completed in 2014, their heirs for seventy years after death — a royalty each time a work resells through an art market professional: auction houses, galleries and dealers. It applies when the sale price reaches €1,000, and the royalty follows a sliding scale set in law: 4 per cent on the portion of price up to €50,000, stepping down through 3, 1, 0.5 and 0.25 per cent above that, with a total cap of €12,500 per sale. Private sales between individuals do not attract it; the professionals are the collection point because they are the record-keepers.
In the UK, collecting societies — DACS foremost among them — administer the right, matching sale records to artists and distributing royalties, typically taking an administrative commission for the service. An artist registers with a collecting society rather than chasing auctioneers individually, an arrangement UK intellectual property guidance supports with published explanations of the right.
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Who actually pays, and when?
The seller pays, deducted at source by the auction house or dealer conducting the sale. The professional must withhold the royalty, report the qualifying sale to the collecting society and pass the money on; failing to do so is a breach of the regulations, not a courtesy skipped. For living artists, payments are identified from sale records and forwarded; for deceased artists within the seventy-year window, heirs or their estates receive them.
What does the right mean for craft makers?
Most craft work resells below the €1,000 threshold, so for many makers the right is theoretical — until it is not. Ceramics and studio glass by named makers have crossed the threshold at auction for years, and as secondary markets for leading ceramicists deepen, the right increasingly touches makers who thought of themselves as outside the art market entirely. The practical steps are simple: keep dated records of your works and buyers, register with a collecting society so qualifying sales can be matched to you, and let buyers know that future resale may carry the royalty — a disclosure that costs nothing and reads, correctly, as a mark of work expected to hold value.
The deeper point the right encodes is one makers already know: the object keeps living after the first sale, and the law has decided the hands that made it stay party to that life, in a small percentage, for up to seventy years.
