Privacy Policy

Who we are

Sharpe Fine Art is the data controller for personal information collected through this website. If you have any questions about how we handle your data, or wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us at privacy@sharpefineart.co.uk.

We are in the process of registering with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as required under UK GDPR. Our registration number will be published here once confirmed.

What information we collect and why

Enquiries

When you contact us through our enquiry form, we collect your name, email address, the contents of your message, and — where you choose to provide them — your phone number and the artwork or artist you are enquiring about. Only your name, email address and message are required; the other fields are optional. We use this information solely to respond to your enquiry. The lawful basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in responding to questions about our services, and where you make a purchase enquiry, the performance of a contract.

Enquiries are delivered to us by Web3Forms, a form-handling service that passes your submission on to our email inbox. Your submission is transmitted through their systems in order to reach us. Whether you would also like to hear from us in future is a separate, optional tick on the same form, unticked by default, and your enquiry never depends on it; if you leave it unticked, nothing about you is added to any list. Your answer to it is not sent to Web3Forms.

Art fair invitations

When you claim a complimentary invitation to an art fair through an invitation page on this site, we collect your name, email address, the number of people in your party, and — where you choose to reserve one — the day and time of a private introduction to the collection. We use this information solely to send you the invitation you asked for and, where applicable, to hold your appointment. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in fulfilling a request you have made of us.

Whether you would like to hear from us afterwards is a separate, optional choice, unticked by default, and claiming an invitation never depends on it. If you leave it unticked, we do not add you to any list at all.

Our mailing list

There are three ways to join, and all of them are choices you make: the optional tick when you claim an art fair invitation, the optional tick on the enquiry form, and the “Join our mailing list” form on our enquiry page, which asks for your email address and, if you would like to give it, your name. We record which of the three it was, so that we can show where your consent came from.

Where you do opt in, we keep your name and email address on our mailing list, which we hold separately from your invitation: the invitation is spent once the fair is over, while your subscription lasts until you end it. Alongside it we record that you consented, when, and the exact wording you agreed to, so that we can show the consent was freely given. The lawful basis is your consent.

You can withdraw it at any time by emailing us, and it is as easy to withdraw as it was to give. When you do, we stop sending you anything and keep only the record of the consent you gave and withdrew — that record is how we can show that what we sent you beforehand was lawful.

Form bot protection

Our forms include a hidden field designed to catch automated bot submissions, which runs entirely within the form itself and collects no personal information about you. The enquiry form additionally uses hCaptcha, a challenge provided by Intuition Machines, Inc., which verifies that you are a human visitor. hCaptcha processes your IP address, browser and device information, and your interactions with the challenge, and may set cookies on your device for this purpose. Their use of this data is governed by the hCaptcha privacy policy. The lawful basis for both measures is our legitimate interest in keeping our forms secure and free from spam.

Website analytics

We use two analytics services, Vercel Web Analytics and Cloudflare Web Analytics, to see how many people visit and which pages they read. Neither sets cookies, and neither follows you to other websites. Between them they record page views, the site that referred you, and general device, browser and country information. Cloudflare's cannot recognise you at all; Vercel's can tell that two page views on the same day came from the same visitor, using a one-way code that is discarded daily and cannot be traced back to you. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in improving the website.

Hosting and server logs

The site is hosted and delivered by Vercel. Cloudflare provides the domain name service for our web addresses and redirects our alternative address, sharpe-fine-art.com, to the main site. Both process your IP address as an ordinary part of routing and protecting web traffic, and we do not access those logs. See Vercel's privacy policy and Cloudflare's privacy policy for details.

Cookies

We do not set any cookies of our own, and both of our analytics tools were specifically chosen because they operate without them. The only cookies that may be set are those placed by hCaptcha on the enquiry page, which are strictly necessary to protect the form from automated abuse. Because we set no analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies, no consent banner is required.

How long we keep your information

• Enquiry messages: retained for up to 3 years, or until you ask us to delete them, whichever comes first.
• Art fair invitations: deleted within three months of the fair, or when you ask us to delete them, whichever comes first.
• Mailing list: kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it. After you unsubscribe we keep the record of your consent and its withdrawal for a further two years, so that we can show any message we sent you was lawful.
• Analytics data: held in aggregated form by Vercel for up to 12 months, and by Cloudflare for up to 6 months, per their respective standard retention policies.

Who we share your information with

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We share it only where strictly necessary to run this website:

• Vercel — hosts and delivers this website, and provides our website analytics.
• Cloudflare — provides our second website analytics service, domain name services for our web addresses, and the redirect from our alternative address to the main site.
• Web3Forms — delivers enquiry form submissions to our email inbox.
• Supabase — hosts the database behind this website, including art fair invitations claimed and our mailing list.
• Intuition Machines (hCaptcha) — provides the anti-spam check on the enquiry form.
• Our email provider — used to receive and manage enquiries once they reach us.

Any such provider acts solely on our instructions under a data processing agreement.

Transfers outside the UK

Some of the providers above are based outside the UK, which means your information may be processed in other countries. Where this happens, the transfer is covered by safeguards recognised under UK GDPR, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate information.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data where there is no compelling reason to continue holding it.
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data while a concern is resolved.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format where applicable.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@sharpefineart.co.uk. We will respond within one month.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection supervisory authority:

• Website: ico.org.uk
• Helpline: 0303 123 1113

We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concern first.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top of the page reflects the most recent revision. Significant changes will be noted here.