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. 23 shown for “Knife with Earthenware Handle” — 64 records examined, 4 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-01 11:52 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Earthenware Lantern
Artist not stated in the record · 9th–10th century

Dinner Knife with Earthenware Handle
Artist not stated in the record · possibly 18th century

Pharmacy Jar with the Arms of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala
Artist not stated in the record · 1425–50

Dinner Knife with Earthenware Handle
Artist not stated in the record · possibly 18th century

Two-Handled Jar with Stag
Artist not stated in the record · early 1400s

Knife with Earthenware Handle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1735

Vase
Daniel Marot the Elder · ca. 1690

Knife with Earthenware Handle (One of a Pair)
Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

Fan-shape 'Persian' bottle with handles (one of a pair)
Minton(s) · 1870

Knife with Earthenware Handle (One of a Pair)
Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

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

Fork and Knife with Glazed Earthenware Handles
Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, Meissen, Saxony, Germany, founded 1710 · mid-18th century
Tripod cup with ring handle (bei)
Artist not stated in the record · first half of the 8th century

Knife with Saber-Shaped Blade and Earthenware Handle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1745
Rhyton with handle in the shape of a monkey
Artist not stated in the record · 8th century

Fork with Earthenware Handle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1760–70

Knife
Artist not stated in the record · 1st–3rd century CE or later

Fruit Knife with Mother-of-Pearl Handle
François Nicoud, French, active Paris ca. 1875-1890 · ca. 1890

Posset pot with cover
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1680–1710

Fruit Knife with Mother-of-Pearl Handle
François Nicoud, French, active Paris ca. 1875-1890 · ca. 1890

Dagger handle (with 22.3.75b)
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1580–1479 BCE

Fruit Knife with Mother-of-Pearl Handle
François Nicoud, French, active Paris ca. 1875-1890 · ca. 1890

Fruit Knife with Mother-of-Pearl Handle
François Nicoud, French, active Paris ca. 1875-1890 · ca. 1890
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. 1452 matched · 24 examined · 3 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. 279289 matched · 40 examined · 1 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 2026-09-01 11:52 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.