OpenTwo 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. 21 shown for “Speed Mail letter” — 64 records examined, 10 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-01 01:04 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Shirt of Mail
Artist not stated in the record · 15th century
Speed Mail letter
Artist not stated in the record · 1960
Shirt of Mail and Plate
Artist not stated in the record · late 15th–16th century
Speed Mail document
Artist not stated in the record · 1960
Letter
Wang Duo
Speed Mail document
Artist not stated in the record · 1960
Letter
Wang Zhideng
Speed Mail form
Artist not stated in the record · 1960
The Love Letter
Jean Honoré Fragonard · early 1770s
Photograph of letter carrier delivering mail by bicycle
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1890
Field Armor
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1525; left arm defense, 19th century; rondels, 1923
Airmail poster
Artist not stated in the record · c.1949-1958
Composed Armor
Matthes Deutsch · 15th century and later
Gothic Armor
Artist not stated in the record · late 15th century; extensively restored and completed ca. 1926
Advertisement for the New York Central Railroad
Artist not stated in the record · 1944
Advertisement for Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Products
Artist not stated in the record · 1945
Armor for the Tilt
Anton Peffenhauser · ca. 1580
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Umberto Boccioni · 1913, cast 1950
"First Flight Regular Mail" pouch
Artist not stated in the record · October 6, 1953
Composed Armor for Man and Horse
Missaglia workshop · ca. 1450–1525 and later
Photograph of letter carrier in Mailster vehicle
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1955
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. 147 matched · 24 examined · 9 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. 16033 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 01:04 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.