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. 16 shown for “Toy mailbox bank” — 46 records examined, 29 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-31 23:07 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.
Merry Company on a Terrace, by Jan Steen

Merry Company on a Terrace

Jan Steen · ca. 1670

Public domainThe Met
Toy mailbox bank

Toy mailbox bank

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1946

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Madonna and Child, by Filippino Lippi

Madonna and Child

Filippino Lippi · ca. 1483–84

Public domainThe Met
Toy mailbox

Toy mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1950-1970

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Amusements in Kyoto in the Four Seasons, by Maruyama Ōkyo 円山応挙

Amusements in Kyoto in the Four Seasons

Maruyama Ōkyo 円山応挙 · late 1770s–early 1780s

Public domainThe Met
Deschler Mailbox Co. RFD Joroleman-style mailbox, by Deschler Mailbox Company

Deschler Mailbox Co. RFD Joroleman-style mailbox

Deschler Mailbox Company · 20th Century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Fish in Summer and Autumn, by Maruyama Ōkyo

Fish in Summer and Autumn

Maruyama Ōkyo · 1785

Public domainThe Met
Street Lamppost Letterbox

Street Lamppost Letterbox

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1880

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Silver Century Rural Free Delivery mailbox

Silver Century Rural Free Delivery mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · 20th Century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Theodore Cole Pulling his Toy Sailboat, Catskill, New York, by Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900

Theodore Cole Pulling his Toy Sailboat, Catskill, New York

Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900 · August 1844

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of snorkel chute curbside mailbox

Photograph of snorkel chute curbside mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1953

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Rural Free Delivery mailbox

Rural Free Delivery mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · 20th Century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Mailbox remnant from 1906 San Francisco earthquake

Mailbox remnant from 1906 San Francisco earthquake

Artist not stated in the record · 1905-1972

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Swedish mailbox

Swedish mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · mid 20th-early 21st Century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
West German mailbox

West German mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1949-1990

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of boy mailing a letter

Photograph of boy mailing a letter

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1880

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. 6 matched · 6 examined · 2 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.4 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 140353 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 2026-08-31 23:07 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.