How we verify

Plain version: we list a shop when its public evidence points to a person making the work. That evidence can be wrong or go out of date. A listing is our honest reading of what the shop shows. It is not a certification or a guarantee.

Why the name

Pseudo means artificial. Feigned comes from the Latin fingere, to shape, mould or fashion by hand, and it later came to mean faked. It's a small joke: a watercolour, a hand-cut sticker and a hand-drawn map are all artificial in the strict sense. People made them. We list work that is artificial in that older way, not generated by AI. The name is playful, but the method below isn't. Each listing is based on public evidence, and it isn't a guarantee. Archivalobal is our own word too: archival plus global, a worldwide archive of things people made.

What we look for

A shop needs at least one strong signal, and we prefer two or more:

• Process you can see. Time-lapse or process videos, work-in-progress posts, sketches, scans of the physical piece.
• A clear maker statement. Wording on the shop itself saying the work is drawn or painted by the maker and that generative AI is not used. Wording that only covers some products counts only for those products.
• Medium and materials named. “Gouache on cotton paper” is a claim you can check. “Digital art” on its own isn’t.
• A body of work over time. Years of consistent style, older posts, exhibitions, client history.
• Presence on human-art spaces. An active profile on Cara (which bans AI images), or certification through a registry such as Maker Verified. These help, but on their own they aren’t enough.
• Named people. Shops that sell other people’s designs, like desk-mat brands, should credit the artist for each design.

What keeps a shop off the list

• “Curated” or “original designs” with no named artist and no process shown.
• A “no AI” tag used as a search keyword, with nothing behind it.
• Large catalogues of near-identical images released very quickly.
• Mockups that are renders rather than photographs, unless clearly labelled.

Every listing shows

• The specific evidence we relied on, with a link to where we found it.
• A last checked date. Shops change, so we re-check over time.

Something looks wrong?

If you think a listing is mistaken or out of date, we’d like to know. A contact method will be added before launch. We review reports by hand and remove listings when the evidence no longer holds.