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. 17 shown for “Fragment of an Ivory Comb” — 64 records examined, 35 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-29 09:50 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.
Fragment of an Ivory Comb

Fragment of an Ivory Comb

Artist not stated in the record · 1st–3rd century

Public domainThe Met
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Comb

Comb

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1550–1458 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Comb

Comb

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1550–1458 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Shawl fragment

Shawl fragment

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1800

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Comb

Comb

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1550–1458 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Hair Comb Decorated with Rows of Wild Animals

Hair Comb Decorated with Rows of Wild Animals

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 3200–3100 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Textile

Textile

Artist not stated in the record · late 17th–mid- 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Settee, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Settee

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema · ca. 1885

Public domainThe Met
Couch and footstool with bone carvings and glass inlays

Couch and footstool with bone carvings and glass inlays

Artist not stated in the record · 1st–2nd century CE

Public domainThe Met
Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Artist not stated in the record · 2nd quarter of the 6th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Comb fragment

Comb fragment

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1550–1300 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Booklet with Scenes of the Passion

Booklet with Scenes of the Passion

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1300 (carving); ca. 1310–20 (painting)

Public domainThe Met
Box with Romance Scenes

Box with Romance Scenes

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1310–30

Public domainThe Met
Comb

Comb

Artist not stated in the record · late 15th or early 16th 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. 293 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. 2892877 matched · 40 examined · 35 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.5 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-29 09:50 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.