Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art

Show HN: Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art

Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art is a business in show hn launch.

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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, nationa

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Website: garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com