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. 15 shown for “Doorknocker with Prudence and Fortitude joined eternally” — 43 records examined, 5 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-28 17:44 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.
Doorknocker with Prudence and Fortitude joined eternally

Doorknocker with Prudence and Fortitude joined eternally

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

Public domainThe Met
Four Ovals: Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, by Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823

Four Ovals: Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, Temperance

Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823 · 1803

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Table clock with calendar, by Lucien Falize

Table clock with calendar

Lucien Falize · 1881

Public domainThe Met
Tile

Tile

Artist not stated in the record · 16th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Vessel terminating in the forepart of a fantastic leonine creature

Vessel terminating in the forepart of a fantastic leonine creature

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Heurtoirs à Boucles, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs à Boucles

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Heurtoirs à Boucles, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs à Boucles

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Project for a Doorknocker

Project for a Doorknocker

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Heurtoirs et Boutons, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs et Boutons

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Heurtoirs et Boutons, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs et Boutons

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Project for a Doorknocker

Project for a Doorknocker

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Heurtoirs à Boucles, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs à Boucles

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Heurtoirs à Boucles, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Heurtoirs à Boucles

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Designs for two doorknockers, by Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96

Designs for two doorknockers

Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · ca. 1780

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Project for a doorknocker

Project for a doorknocker

Artist not stated in the record · 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. 3 matched · 3 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.3 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1522162 matched · 40 examined · 5 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 17:44 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.