Patina
Patina is built for auction houses, working from a simple premise: what a thing is, and what it has been. A real WebGL2 and Three.js renderer lets objects be examined under raking light, the same low, grazing angle appraisers use to reveal wear, repair, and age that flat photography hides. The rest of the site runs on custom PHP with no page builder, keeping catalogue and provenance pages exact rather than assembled from generic blocks.
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Highlights
- Raking-light examination is the signature: drop the lamp almost flat to a picture and every ridge of paint throws a shadow. A WebGL2 shader derives surface normals from the plate by shape-from-shading and relights it live, and the readout names the lamp angle the way a conservation report would — while the widget states plainly that a measured relief map needs photometric stereo, so it never overclaims
- A real Three.js viewing room hangs the sale on a wall at true per-work aspect ratios under individually aimed spotlights with cast shadows, so a client can walk the hang before the viewing opens
- A deep-zoom loupe on every lot page magnifies to the brushstroke with cursor-anchored zoom — the gesture a specialist actually makes with a glass in hand
- Catalogue-spread layout: a fixed margin column for lot numbers, hairline rules instead of cards, ledger-aligned estimates in tabular figures, and provenance set as a descent chain — the typography of a printed sale catalogue, not of a shop
- Lots, sales, departments and specialists as first-class content, carrying the full scholarly apparatus (provenance, exhibited, literature, condition) that is what a house is actually paid to establish
- Forthcoming and concluded sales are modelled separately, so a lot can only be marked sold once its sale has actually been held — estimates read as offers and realised prices read as results
- Demo plates are real public-domain masterworks from the open-access collection of the Art Institute of Chicago with the museum catalogue metadata intact — no grey boxes and no licensing risk
Overview
Patina is for a house that sells objects on the strength of what it can establish about them. The layout is the catalogue spread — lot numbers in a fixed margin column, hairline rules in place of cards, estimates aligned like a ledger in tabular figures, and provenance, exhibition history, literature and condition given the room they get in print.
The signature is examination, not decoration. Drop the lamp almost flat to a picture and every ridge of paint throws a shadow; the raking-light widget reproduces that with a WebGL2 shader that derives surface normals from the plate and relights it live, reporting the lamp angle the way a condition report would. It also states plainly that a measured relief map needs photometric stereo, because a saleroom that overclaims loses the room.
Alongside it: a Three.js viewing room that hangs the sale at true per-work aspect ratios under aimed spotlights, and a deep-zoom loupe on every lot page. Sales are modelled as forthcoming or concluded, so a lot can only be marked sold once its sale has been held.
Suits auction houses, valuers, private dealers, antiquarian booksellers, numismatic and philatelic specialists, and any gallery whose selling point is scholarship.
What's included
- Full theme source — every template, style sheet & script
- One-click demo importer (idempotent, no page builder)
- Live Customizer controls for copy, colours & content
- Translation-ready .pot file + RTL stylesheet
- HTML documentation + a CHANGELOG file
- Lifetime updates + 6 months support (renewable)
Specifications
| WordPress | 5.6 – 7.0 |
|---|---|
| PHP | 8.0 – 8.3 |
| Browsers | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge (latest) |
| Layout | Fully responsive, mobile → desktop |
| Localization | Translation-ready · RTL included |
| Accessibility | Keyboard-navigable · prefers-reduced-motion |
| Page builder | Not required — native Customizer |
| License | GNU GPL v2 · single-site commercial |
Release
The complete, dated version history ships in the theme’s CHANGELOG file. Every purchase includes lifetime access to future updates.
