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 “Printing instructions for envelopes in letter” — 40 records examined, 7 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-31 23:17 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.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Printing instructions for envelopes in letter

Printing instructions for envelopes in letter

Artist not stated in the record · December 15, 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Schermack postage vending machine documents

Schermack postage vending machine documents

Artist not stated in the record · 1947

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Letter written by Nelson Jordan Jr. and Nelson Jordan to Julia Womack

Letter written by Nelson Jordan Jr. and Nelson Jordan to Julia Womack

Artist not stated in the record · February 4, 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Confederate flag-of-truce letter

Confederate flag-of-truce letter

Artist not stated in the record · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Letter to postmasters from Postmaster General Return J. Meigs Jr.

Letter to postmasters from Postmaster General Return J. Meigs Jr.

Artist not stated in the record · 1815

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Title Page, by Pierre Thomas Le Clerc, French, ca. 1740 - ca. 1796

Title Page

Pierre Thomas Le Clerc, French, ca. 1740 - ca. 1796 · 1773

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
American Bank Note Company envelope shipping lists

American Bank Note Company envelope shipping lists

Artist not stated in the record · December 15, 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
American Bank Note Company envelope shipping lists

American Bank Note Company envelope shipping lists

Artist not stated in the record · December 15, 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Express from Richmond to Louisville posted to New York cover

Express from Richmond to Louisville posted to New York cover

Artist not stated in the record · August 8, 1861

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
6-cent, Air Post Envelope Working Die, by Bureau of Engraving and Printing

6-cent, Air Post Envelope Working Die

Bureau of Engraving and Printing · c. 1948

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Envelope for a letter from Afro-American Newspapers to Rev. V. Stokes, by Unidentified

Envelope for a letter from Afro-American Newspapers to Rev. V. Stokes

Unidentified · September 16, 1958

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
6-cent, Air Post Envelope Working Die, by Bureau of Engraving and Printing

6-cent, Air Post Envelope Working Die

Bureau of Engraving and Printing · c. 1950

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 7469059 matched · 40 examined · 7 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 2026-08-31 23:17 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.