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. 19 shown for “Door handle” — 64 records examined, 29 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 09:42 UTC · served from cache, not re-queried 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.
Door Handle

Door Handle

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

Public domainThe Met
Door Knocker or Handle Designs, by Antoine Pierretz le jeune, French, active 1660-70

Door Knocker or Handle Designs

Antoine Pierretz le jeune, French, active 1660-70 · ca. 1665

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door Handle

Door Handle

Artist not stated in the record · 16th century

Public domainThe Met
Recto, Design for a door handle with alternative suggestions, by Jean Le Pautre, French, 1618–1682

Recto, Design for a door handle with alternative suggestions

Jean Le Pautre, French, 1618–1682 · ca. 1660–80

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door Handle

Door Handle

Artist not stated in the record · late 15th century

Public domainThe Met
handle, door

handle, door

Artist not stated in the record · 1790- 1820

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door Handle

Door Handle

Artist not stated in the record · 1700–1730

Public domainThe Met
handle, door

handle, door

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1790

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
handle, door

handle, door

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1775-1799

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Bird cage in the form of a circus wagon

Bird cage in the form of a circus wagon

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Foot Warmer

Foot Warmer

Artist not stated in the record · 1850-1900

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door knocker, by Robert Frederick Blum, American, 1857–1903

Door knocker

Robert Frederick Blum, American, 1857–1903 · 1881

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door handle

Door handle

Artist not stated in the record · 1560–1600

Public domainThe Met
Rubber-handled Door Opener, by unknown

Rubber-handled Door Opener

unknown · 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door Handle

Door Handle

Artist not stated in the record · late 15th century

Public domainThe Met
Foot Warmer Patent Model

Foot Warmer Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1847-03-20

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door handle

Door handle

Artist not stated in the record · 15th century

Public domainThe Met
Framed photograph of General Colin L. Powell and President George W. Bush

Framed photograph of General Colin L. Powell and President George W. Bush

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 2001-2007

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Door Handle

Door Handle

Artist not stated in the record · 15th century

Public domainThe Met
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. 117 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. 22160 matched · 40 examined · 29 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.11 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-04 09:42 UTC, replayed here rather than repeated. 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.