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 “Tomb model of a foot-powered mill” — 40 records examined, 27 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-02 13:20 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.

Tomb model of a foot-powered mill

Tomb model of a foot-powered mill

Artist not stated in the record · early 1st-early 3rd century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Upper grindstone from a tomb model of a mill

Upper grindstone from a tomb model of a mill

Artist not stated in the record · early 1st-early 3rd century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Left Foot, by Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873

Left Foot

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · n.d.

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Catherine Hampton, by Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873

Catherine Hampton

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · modeled 1849

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1837 Crompton's Patent Model of a Power Loom

1837 Crompton's Patent Model of a Power Loom

Artist not stated in the record · 1837-11-25

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Numbering and Paging Machine, by Sine, Alpheus C.

Patent Model of a Numbering and Paging Machine

Sine, Alpheus C. · ca 1871

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Cottle Windmill, Patent Model

Cottle Windmill, Patent Model

Artist not stated in the record · 1879

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Howe’s Patent Model of a Pin Making Machine - ca 1841

Howe’s Patent Model of a Pin Making Machine - ca 1841

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1841

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
America, by Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873

America

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · 1848-1850

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1837 Thorp's Patent Model of a Loom Shuttle Tongue

1837 Thorp's Patent Model of a Loom Shuttle Tongue

Artist not stated in the record · 1837-04-17

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent Model of a Steam Steering Apparatus, 1860

Patent Model of a Steam Steering Apparatus, 1860

Artist not stated in the record · 1860

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Cleopatra, by Margaret Foley, born likely Northern VT 1827-died Meran, Austria-Hungary (now Merano, Italy) 187

Cleopatra

Margaret Foley, born likely Northern VT 1827-died Meran, Austria-Hungary (now Merano, Italy) 187 · modeled ca. 1871, carved 1876

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. 69 matched · 40 examined · 27 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 2026-09-02 13:20 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.