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 “Box with Pommel Scroll Design” — 40 records examined, 25 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-27 22:13 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.

Designs for Sword Handles, Pommels, and Dagger Hilts, by Antoine Jacquard, French, active ca. 1616 – d. 1652

Designs for Sword Handles, Pommels, and Dagger Hilts

Antoine Jacquard, French, active ca. 1616 – d. 1652 · ca. 1615

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Dagger Form Knife

Dagger Form Knife

Artist not stated in the record · early 16th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sword Hilt (Handles) and Guard Designs, by Friedrich Jacob Morison, German, active 1693 – 1699

Sword Hilt (Handles) and Guard Designs

Friedrich Jacob Morison, German, active 1693 – 1699 · ca. 1700

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Designs for Firearms Ornament, by Gilles Demarteau, Flemish, 1722 – 1776

Designs for Firearms Ornament

Gilles Demarteau, Flemish, 1722 – 1776 · ca. 1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Carriage Box Seat (Driver’s Seat) and Body, by Louis Van Nerven, Dutch, active ca. 1750

Design for a Carriage Box Seat (Driver’s Seat) and Body

Louis Van Nerven, Dutch, active ca. 1750 · 1755–69

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Snuff box

Snuff box

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1750

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Hilt and Guard of a Dress Sword with Alternative Suggestions

Design for a Hilt and Guard of a Dress Sword with Alternative Suggestions

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1780–90

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Sword Hilt, by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, French, b. Italy, 1695–1750

Design for a Sword Hilt

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, French, b. Italy, 1695–1750 · ca. 1750

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for Hilt and Guard of a Dress Sword

Design for Hilt and Guard of a Dress Sword

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1780–90

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Covered Box on Stand

Covered Box on Stand

Artist not stated in the record · 1736–1795

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Toledo 1873 Presentation Sword

Toledo 1873 Presentation Sword

Artist not stated in the record · 1873

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Cupids and Scroll Work, by Unger Brothers, Newark, New Jersey, 1872 – 1919

Cupids and Scroll Work

Unger Brothers, Newark, New Jersey, 1872 – 1919 · ca. 1896

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. 392642 matched · 40 examined · 25 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 2026-08-27 22:13 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.