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. 17 shown for “Swaddling bands” — 45 records examined, 19 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-07 09:13 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.
Swaddling bands

Swaddling bands

Artist not stated in the record · 17th century

Public domainThe Met
The Virgin and Child in Swaddling Clothes

The Virgin and Child in Swaddling Clothes

Artist not stated in the record · 1520

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Swaddling band

Swaddling band

Artist not stated in the record · 16th century

Public domainThe Met
Swaddling cloth

Swaddling cloth

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Swaddling band

Swaddling band

Artist not stated in the record · 16th century

Public domainThe Met
Swaddling cloth

Swaddling cloth

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Madonna and Child, by Guariento di Arpo

Madonna and Child

Guariento di Arpo

Public domainThe Met
Swaddling cloth

Swaddling cloth

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard, by Gerard David

The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard

Gerard David · ca. 1510–15

Public domainThe Met
Portrait of a Boy and a Swaddled Child

Portrait of a Boy and a Swaddled Child

Artist not stated in the record · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Swaddling cloth

Swaddling cloth

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
In Swaddlings, by Alice Pike Barney, born Cincinnati, OH 1857-died Los Angeles, CA 1931

In Swaddlings

Alice Pike Barney, born Cincinnati, OH 1857-died Los Angeles, CA 1931 · ca. 1911

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ornament, Christmas tree

Ornament, Christmas tree

Artist not stated in the record · 1850–99

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ornament, Christmas tree

Ornament, Christmas tree

Artist not stated in the record · 1850–99

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Anguloa virginalis

Anguloa virginalis

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Washington Monument cornerstone fragment, Washington, D.C., 1848

Washington Monument cornerstone fragment, Washington, D.C., 1848

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Letter carrier band majorette shorts

Letter carrier band majorette shorts

Artist not stated in the record · 1890-2020

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. 5 matched · 5 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.5 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 14535 matched · 40 examined · 19 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 2026-09-07 09:13 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.