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. 24 shown for “Bowl with dragon” — 64 records examined, 15 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 05:39 UTC · fetched live for this request

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.

Bowl with dragons amid waves

Artist not stated in the record · 10th–11th century

Public domainThe Met

Design for a Teapot

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1780

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Dragon

Artist not stated in the record · after 1200

Public domainThe Met

International Tea Party

Winslow Homer, American, 1836–1910 · ca. 1867

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with Dragon

Artist not stated in the record · mid-16th century

Public domainThe Met

Knife with Axe Shaped Blade and Dragon

Charles Victor Gibert, French · ca. 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1735

Public domainThe Met

Ornament Designs for use on Teapots and Bowls

Masson, French, active late 17th and early 18th century · late 17th–early 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon handles

Artist not stated in the record · 18th–19th century

Public domainThe Met

Ornament Designs for use on Teapots and Bowls

Masson, French, active late 17th and early 18th century · late 17th–early 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon handles

Artist not stated in the record · 15th–16th century

Public domainThe Met

Project for a marble flower bowl

Artist not stated in the record · 1800–1825

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Armor (Gusoku)

Saotome Ietada · 16th and 18th centuries

Public domainThe Met

Design for a Tureen

Joseph Anton Seethaler II, German, 1799–1868 · 1820-1830

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl

Artist not stated in the record · 15th century

Public domainThe Met

Bowl and cover

Artist not stated in the record · 18th–19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with Dragons

Artist not stated in the record · early 16th century

Public domainThe Met

Theagenes taming the Bull in Ethiopia [above left]; Theagenes taming the Bull in Ethiopia [below left]; Dragon Hunt in India [above right]; Dragon Hunt in India [below right].

Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Flemish, 1523–1605 · ca. 1600

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon

Artist not stated in the record · first half of the 19th century

Public domainThe Met

SUCRIERS DE SERVICE

Henri Sallembier, French, ca. 1753 - 1820 · 1805

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

Public domainThe Met

Ladle With Spout and Dragonfly Terminal

Charles Victor Gibert, French · ca. 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Bowl with dragon

Artist not stated in the record · late 16th–early 17th century

Public domainThe Met

Berry Server with Leaf-form Bowl, Red Enameled Strawberries and Dragonfly

Charles Victor Gibert, French · ca. 1890

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. 7472 matched · 24 examined · 1 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 321500 matched · 40 examined · 14 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 2026-09-03 05:39 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.

Read the method

Elsewhere in the catalogue

Section 01Character index9 hand-compiled entries, each with sources, version scope, and a confidence value.Section 02NewsWhat has already cleared the US term, and what clears next — January 1, 2027.Section 03MethodThree status values, three confidence values, and copyright kept apart from trademark.