OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 12 shown for “1c Documentary Express revenue stamp single and pair on photograph” — 40 records examined, 1 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-31 23:21 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

1c Documentary Express revenue stamp single and pair on photograph

1c Documentary Express revenue stamp single and pair on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · 1864-1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Documentary Proprietary, 2c Documentary Bank Check singles on photograph

1c Documentary Proprietary, 2c Documentary Bank Check singles on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · 1864-1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Documentary Proprietary revenue stamp with fancy cancel single

1c Documentary Proprietary revenue stamp with fancy cancel single

Artist not stated in the record · 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
5c Documentary Express revenue stamp single on Adams Express Company’s receipt

5c Documentary Express revenue stamp single on Adams Express Company’s receipt

Artist not stated in the record · February 6, 1863

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
2c Documentary Bank Check revenue stamp single on photograph

2c Documentary Bank Check revenue stamp single on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · 1864-1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
3c Documentary Proprietary revenue stamp single on photograph

3c Documentary Proprietary revenue stamp single on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1865

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
2c Documentary Playing Cards revenue stamp single on photograph

2c Documentary Playing Cards revenue stamp single on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · 1864-1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
2c Documentary Internal Revenue revenue stamp single on photograph

2c Documentary Internal Revenue revenue stamp single on photograph

Artist not stated in the record · 1864-1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
$200 Documentary Internal Revenue revenue stamp single

$200 Documentary Internal Revenue revenue stamp single

Artist not stated in the record · 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
5c Documentary Inland Exchange revenue stamp single on marriage certificate

5c Documentary Inland Exchange revenue stamp single on marriage certificate

Artist not stated in the record · September 14, 1871

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
50c Documentary Second Issue revenue stamp invert strip of five

50c Documentary Second Issue revenue stamp invert strip of five

Artist not stated in the record · 1871-1872

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
$20 Documentary Conveyance revenue stamp single

$20 Documentary Conveyance revenue stamp single

Artist not stated in the record · 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1828451 matched · 40 examined · 1 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-31 23:21 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.