01Enquiries

When you write to the desk we hold your name, the address you asked us to reply to, the preparation or working you named, and what you wrote. The enquiry is entered in the holding book under a reference and answered against that reference.

We keep enquiries for two years and then destroy them. If you would rather we destroyed yours sooner, say so and quote the reference.

02Commissioned files

A commissioned working generates a file: the account you gave, what was agreed, and the practitioner’s notes.

These are retained forty years. A petitioner may request their own file at any time and we will send it whole. The practitioner’s notes are not redacted before we do, which occasionally surprises people, and we would rather say so here than have it be a surprise.

03Donors

Donor identities are held at the atelier and are not held on this website, in this website’s hosting, or by anyone outside the compounding room. What appears in public is a number and an occupation.

Consent is held in writing, renewed annually, and terminable by the donor at any hour without notice or explanation. When it is terminated the material is destroyed and so is everything that identifies its source.

04What this site does not do

This site sets no cookies. It runs no analytics, carries no advertising, embeds no tracking pixel and loads nothing from a third party except the typefaces.

We therefore do not know how many people read these pages, which of them they read, or where they came from. We have decided not to find out.

05Where things are kept

The site is served from Amazon Web Services and the enquiry form is delivered by the same. That means a page you read from a Geneva house was fetched from a data centre in Oregon, and we mention it because saying “Geneva” about everything would be misleading.

Enquiries are delivered to the desk’s mailbox and are not stored on the website’s infrastructure beyond the moment of delivery. No database sits behind this site because there is nothing for one to hold.

06Your rights

You may ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and ask us to destroy it. Write to the desk. If your request concerns an enquiry, quote the reference; if it concerns a commission, the practitioner’s name will find it faster than yours will.

We answer these in order of receipt like everything else, and we do not charge for them.

07If something goes wrong

If we lose control of anything we hold, we will say so, to the people it concerns, in plain language, and without waiting to be asked.