Back to HN Show HN: Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII artby california-og | 102 points | 15 comments | 2026-06-15 23:25:57 Central Open Source Link | Read Source Here Open on Hacker News PostHey 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 CommentsAardwolf
>
https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?page=LKBGE51
F3...Wow this is awesome, they had box-drawing characters
in 1785!
| efitz
You should look at some Arabic calligraphy- there is a lot
of artistic Arabic calligraphy where passages from the
Quran, poetry, and other text are written beautifully as
art.
| > efitz
BTW sorry for my rudeness, I find your project very
cool and I love calligraphic type projects. I was so
excited that I wanted to share something related to
you. :-)
| > > california-og
Heh no worries and thanks! I love Arabic/Islamic
calligraphy too, but I've had to leave out all
calligraphic forms of text art (calligrammes,
micrography, carmina figurata, 17th century
european calligraphic art, etc..) out of the
archive to keep the scope of the project focused
and clear. Otherwise it would take me another 8
years :)However, there's some arabic letterpress
stuff in the archive!
https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?filt
ers=arabic
I hope to find more, especially the kufic style,
but I haven't found many good sources for that
kind of stuff yet.
| kevinmiller452
Love this. The 18th century type specimens are gorgeous
and it's amazing you pulled them from old digitized books.
Do you have plans to add any interactive features like
zoom on the images?
| > california-og
Thank you! If you click on the images, you get a
zoomable, full resolution view.
| softgrow
At school studying typing there was a class of 66 all
manual typewriters except for the two electrics. If you
were good and had some spare time, you were given printed
instructions to type particular characters and returns.
Sometimes shift into red ink. Do it properly and you got
an image. So maybe pre ASCII art?
| > california-og
Definitely! Take a look at these books:-Fun with your
typewriter by Madge Roemer
https://archive.org/details/FunWithTypewriter/mode/thu
mb-Artyping by Julius Nelson
https://archive.org/details/Artyping-HQ/mode/thumb-Typ
ewriter Art by Alan Riddell
https://archive.org/details/TypewriterArt-AlanRiddell/
mode/t...
| una_usta
This is awesome! A few months ago I got a tattoo of one of
the flowers from
https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?page=LKBGE51
F3...I've been variously told it looks like the sun, a
hedgehog, and a lion & I'm kind fond of all those
descriptions
| frmfrm
Absolutely incredible, thank you for making this!
| frmfrm
Would love to suggest having a way to get the whole
archive and metadata to browse locally or mirror, perhaps
via a torrent?
| mujib77
Unique idea looks good
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