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 “Cup and saucer with the Chinese story of Sima Guang” — 64 records examined, 28 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-28 00:01 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.

Cup and saucer with the Chinese story of Sima Guang

Artist not stated in the record · 1700–1730

Public domainThe Met

Cup and saucer

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Dish with the Chinese story of Sima Guang

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700–1720

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer with Putti Medallion

Gotha Porcelain Factory, German, established ca. 1757 · 1860–1885

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Dish with the story of "Hob in the Well"

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory · ca. 1755

Public domainThe Met

Octagonal Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · 1735–1745

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

"Xiangpu’s Treasure" Guqin (古琴 )

Artist not stated in the record · mid 19th century

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Cup with dragon handles and saucer

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Cup and saucer with butterflies

Chantilly · ca. 1735

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Chocolate cup and saucer with dragons and phoenixes

Meissen Manufactory · ca. 1739

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Landscapes with poems

Gong Xian · 1688

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Octagonal cup with dragon handles

Artist not stated in the record · 17th century

Public domainThe Met

Cup with "Etruscan" Handles and Saucer (Gobelet à Anses Etrusques et Soucoupe)

Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, French, established 1756 · 1795–1805

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

The Temptation

Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca) · 1746

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Cup and saucer

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1760–70

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Cup and saucer

Artist not stated in the record · 1735–40

Public domainThe Met

Cup and Saucer

Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, German, active from 1710 to the present · mid- 18th century

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. 44 matched · 24 examined · 0 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. 3223706 matched · 40 examined · 28 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 2026-08-28 00:01 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 index6 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.