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. 20 shown for “Soprano Helicon in B-flat” — 48 records examined, 11 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-06 17:34 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.
Soprano Helicon in B-flat

Soprano Helicon in B-flat

Artist not stated in the record · mid-19th century

Public domainThe Met
Cruet

Cruet

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1810

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano Recorder in B, by Thomas Coenraet Boekhout

Soprano Recorder in B

Thomas Coenraet Boekhout · ca. 1700

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano ophicleide in B-flat, by Adolphe (Antoine Joseph) Sax

Soprano ophicleide in B-flat

Adolphe (Antoine Joseph) Sax · mid-19th century

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano saxophone in B-Flat, by Adolphe (Antoine Joseph) Sax

Soprano saxophone in B-Flat

Adolphe (Antoine Joseph) Sax · 1882

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano Sarrusophone in B-flat, by Gautrot-Marquet

Soprano Sarrusophone in B-flat

Gautrot-Marquet · late 19th century

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Artist not stated in the record · 1855–75

Public domainThe Met
Etui Fork with Green-stained Ivory and Mother-of-Pearl Handle

Etui Fork with Green-stained Ivory and Mother-of-Pearl Handle

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1790

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Artist not stated in the record · 1850–60

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Soprano Saxhorn in B-flat

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1865–89

Public domainThe Met
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Button

Button

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Cruet

Cruet

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1810

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. 8 matched · 8 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.8 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3820 matched · 40 examined · 11 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 2026-09-06 17:34 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.