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. 24 shown for “United States Express Company C.O.D. cover” — 64 records examined, 15 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-08-31 21:28 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Quilt, Album pattern
Brown and Turner families · begun 1846

United States Express Company C.O.D. cover
Artist not stated in the record · April 4, 1896

Covered slop jar
United States Pottery Company · 1849–58

United States Express Company advertising cover send to J. Hibbler
Artist not stated in the record · September 22

Merry Company on a Terrace
Jan Steen · ca. 1670

United States Express Company postal card
Artist not stated in the record · September 12, 1899

Mars and Venus United by Love
Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari) · 1570s

United States Express Company receipt
Artist not stated in the record · October 23, 1858

Teakettle
Cornelius Kierstede · 1710–20

United States Express Company receipt
Artist not stated in the record · October 27, 1858

Covered Toilet Box
United States Pottery Company · 1849–58

Pony Express patriotic cover
Artist not stated in the record · 1861

Covered Sugar Bowl
United States Pottery Company · 1849–58

5c prepaid United States Express Company single
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1854

Covered Butter Dish
United States Pottery Company · 1849

Albany Letter Express label from 1st printing of 500
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1970

Book flask
United States Pottery Company · 1849

Albany Letter Express definitive handstamp delivered March 24, 1970
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1970

Candlestick
United States Pottery Company · 1849–58

Albany Letter Express label from 2nd printing of 500
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1970

Candlestick
United States Pottery Company · 1849–58

1865 adhesive label of S.A. Taylor’s Albany Letter Express
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1970

Basin
United States Pottery Company · ca. 1849–58

Albany Letter Express definitive handstamp of moveable rubber type
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1970
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. 2901 matched · 24 examined · 6 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. 5497503 matched · 40 examined · 9 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 21:28 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.