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 “Table valance with lotus scrolls” — 45 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-10 08:43 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.
Table valance with lotus scrolls

Table valance with lotus scrolls

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th century

Public domainThe Met
Chintz fragment

Chintz fragment

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Palace banquet, by Unidentified artist

Palace banquet

Unidentified artist

Public domainThe Met
Valance

Valance

Artist not stated in the record · early 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
White Lotus Society, by Unidentified artist

White Lotus Society

Unidentified artist · 15th century

Public domainThe Met
Tester and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Tester and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Flowers, by Liang Yuwei

Flowers

Liang Yuwei · Undated

Public domainThe Met
Tester and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Tester and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Kalamkari Rumal

Kalamkari Rumal

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1640–50

Public domainThe Met
Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tester and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Tester and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tester and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Tester and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tester and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Tester and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs, by Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719

Headboard, Backpiece, and Valance Designs

Nicolas Guérard, French, ca.1648 – 1719 · late 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Bowl

Bowl

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Side chair

Side chair

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1840

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. 259583 matched · 40 examined · 3 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 2026-09-10 08:43 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.