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. 12 shown for “Plate XXXIV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum” — 40 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-02 13:27 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.
Plate XXXIV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXXIV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate IX, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate IX, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XXV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XXIV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXIV from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XXIX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXIX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XLI from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XLI from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate LIX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate LIX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XI, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XI, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XLIII from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XLIII from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate 7, Chart from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum, by Bartholomeo Vincent

Plate 7, Chart from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Bartholomeo Vincent · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XXX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXX from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate II, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum, by Bartholomeo Vincent

Plate II, from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Bartholomeo Vincent · 1582

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. The archive returned no records for this term.0 matched
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 590434 matched · 40 examined · 0 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 2026-09-02 13:27 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.