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. 22 shown for “Horse bit cheekpiece in form of a snake's head” — 64 records examined, 30 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-02 00:50 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Horse bit cheekpiece in form of a snake's head
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 7th century BCE

Handle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1775

Trotting horse
Giambologna · probably 1587–91

Snake-form belt buckle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1890

Bronze horse bit
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 725–700 BCE

Ewer with a Bas-Relief
Artist not stated in the record · 1543

Horse Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 7th–9th century

Fragments
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1246

Snaffle Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 8th century BCE

Design for a Bracelet with Alternate Suggestions
Artist not stated in the record · 1825–50

Panel with Horse Heads
Artist not stated in the record · 11th century

Ornamental Vase Design
L.N. Percenet, French, born 1736 · 1761

Snaffle Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 8th–7th century BCE

Decorative Vase
Artist not stated in the record · 1725–50

Snaffle Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 8th–7th century BCE

Censer and Candelabrum Design
Richard de Lalonde, French, active 1780–96 · 1775-1788

Snaffle Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 8th–7th century BCE

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

Curb Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 2nd–1st century BCE

Title Page
Etienne de Lavallée, French, 1735 – 1802 · 1788

Snaffle Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 3rd century BCE

Curb Bit
Artist not stated in the record · 2nd–1st century BCE
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. 477 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. 7483746 matched · 40 examined · 30 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.10 shown
These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-02 00:50 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.