Friday Links: Great wave, mysterious sword, and clean cats

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• American art is full of examples of our depictions of other cultures, so it’s intriguing—and refreshing—to see other cultures depicting us.
• And while on the topic of Japanese prints, here’s a fascinating look at how Hokusai’s “Great Wave” became an icon worldwide.
• The British Library could use your help: They have a 13th-century double-edged sword with an indecipherable inscription inlaid in gold. Care to decipher it for them?
• Chicago’s Newberry Library has digitized a fascinating series of drawings of Apache life made in the 1890s by an Apache prisoner of war. (You might also be interested in the Native American drawings in Artstor from the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives.)

• Nearly 100,000 Syrian children in Lebanon have been traumatized by the conflict in their home country. Can painting help them?
• And finally–purely in the interest of scholarship, mind you–we present you with ten illuminations from medieval manuscripts depicting cats cleaning their butts.