Hey all, I made this. The archive started with my 2015 BA thesis on Amiga ASCII art when I was curious about the history of ASCII art but found very little on text art that came before it. The historical precursors are often attributed to typewriter art and shaped/visual poetry, but I think letterpress is overlooked. So, I got slightly obsessed and started a personal database of pictures built entirely from metal type, ornaments, and rule, some going back to the 1600s. After eight years, I've managed to find ~2500 images. My friend Adel Faure built the website so it's now browseable by anyone!

I would like to note that most images are from public digital collections (Internet Archive, national libraries, etc.) and displayed without permission (for educational purposes). I've tried to source every image, but check the original source and its license before reusing anything. I'd be happy to take down or correct anything.

It's also incomplete and surely has errors and misattributions. Corrections to anything are very welcome.

If anyone has leads on works I haven't catalogued, I'd love to hear them! The practice and pictures are scattered across languages and keywords (type picture, typosignet, typotectur, Bildsatz, stigmatypie, stunt typography...), so things hide in odd corners of archives. If you've seen something like this, please point me at it.

There's also a longer essay on how it began: https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?essay