Located in Kyoto, Japan, the Ukiyoe Small Museum has extremely flexible hours, at least for its owner/operator, artist Ichimura Mamoru, whose sign explains: “When I’ve had enough the store is closed.”

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In big black block letters on a white placard, the message contrasts with the historic facade and is hard to mess. For years, the signage was only in Japanese, but a kind tourist translated it for him into English, at least roughly, so foreign visitors could also get with his unusual program.

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Inside one will find woodblock prints in the traditional ukiyo-e style, which dates back to the 17th Century. These “pictures of the floating world” capture everyday scenes with recognizable perspectives.

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Though less popular now, Mamoru and others like him still make work along the same lines — he learned from his grandfather, and is one of the last few dozen artists of his kind in Japan.

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Those who manage to catch him during his hours of operation can tour the museum, shop and his workshop as well to see how the artwork gets made.

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When we think of ancient persons carefully laying the foundations of stone monuments, or hard at work writing out historical tomes, it’s a bit hard to imagine them brushing away an interrupting cat or dog in frustration, much as we still do today.

But PhD researcher Paul Cooper became fascinated with these everyday moments, frozen in time, as he began to find more and more examples — like 4,000-year-old mud bricks, for instance, “stamped with the name and titles of the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (reigned 2047-2030 BCE) and left out to dry.”

And while dogs may be less prone to hop on on tables, Cooper has found plenty of examples of cats knocking over ink and bounding across work surfaces to leave their mark, or even outright peeing on pages. The scribe of one ancient volume wrote in his text: “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book … because of it many others did too. And beware not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”

Left outside to dry, masonry materials often show signs of accidental intervention. One can find paw prints on clay tablets from the Ziggurat of Ur (21st century BCE), for example, and ancient Roman tiles (from around 0 CE) found in England, left by various species wild or domestic, including dogs, goats and sheep.

Created by an architect and landscape enthusiast, this limited edition series of custom textiles derives its geometries and colors from aerial views shot around the world.

Florian Pucher, an Austrian designer now based in Beijing, has long traveled by day to take in as many sights from the sky as possible. Since 2007 he has collaborated with graphic designer Sophia Liu Bo to redraw and abstract images shot from above, turning them into unusual rugs using high-quality New Zealand wool.

Each LANDCARPET creation is 1 of 88, signed and numbered in the spirit of traditional artistic prints.

The subjects cover the globe, from Europe and the USA to Africa and Asia, urban settings to rural sites.

There is a rich variety from one to the next, showcasing an array of lines, curves, organic land forms, urban topographies, and other natural and man-made patterns and features.

Each edition takes approximately five weeks to produce, combining real depth and hand-tufted textures.

The source images range from aerial photographs and satellite images to maps and other views from above. His work as an architect exposes Pucher to all kinds of site maps, master plans and other inspirational materials.

Each city is as different, and as beautiful, as we are. That’s the sentiment behind ‘Metropolitan Cityscapes‘, beautifully complex city maps with the negative space around the streets meticulously cut out, leaving delicate patterns behind.

Perhaps your tie to your favorite city is family history, or perhaps you walked down one of those unfamiliar streets as a visitor and have never forgotten the way it felt to take part in something entirely new. Designers Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher didn’t just arbitrarily choose the cities for their series of papercut maps, they explored them and set out to capture their essence.

Rather than simply modifying a city map and cutting it out, the designers undertook what they call ‘expeditions’ to gain an intimate understanding of metropolitan cities like Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco. Walking the streets to get a sense of the terrain, discovering the features that stood out to them, colored the way they designed each map.

“The centre of a city, its beating heart, is a palimpsest overflowing with imagery. Layers upon layers of stories have accumulated and disappeared through time. Behind each facade, each brick, each pathway, untold stories, memories and dreams are waiting to be narrated. Above all the noise, if you listen carefully, you can hear your own tale of the city.”

“To tell our stories of the city, we peeled away all the complex urban layers so that only the bare bones of place remains. Each line drawn and cut on every cityscape has a distinct story. Metropolitan Cityscapes are a new vision of the city as organism.”

Catwoman, The Joker, Two-Face and Bane are just the beginning when it comes to Batman’s nemeses in the decades-long history of the character and his complex adventures in Gotham. Have you heard of ‘Swashbuckler’, ‘The Penny Plunderer’, ‘Colonel Sulphur’, or ‘Bamboo Monkey’? These obscure villains and more can all be found on a fun infographic, ‘The Myriad Monikers of Gotham’s Villains’, by Pop Chart Lab.

The taxonomy chart lists hundreds of names divided into categories like Mad Dogs, Arthropods, Colored Masks, The Death Industry and Men of the Cloth. To get a really good look at all of them, check out the zoom feature at Pop Chart Lab.

Each 18×24″ print is signed and numbered by the artists and produced using vegetable-based inks and archival recycled stock in Red Hook, Brooklyn.