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  • 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?
    by softgrow
  • Hey, this archive you've put together is extremely impressive. How did you find all of these? Literally keyword search on digital collections?
    by BugsJustFindMe
  • > https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?page=LKBGE51F3...

    Wow this is awesome, they had box-drawing characters in 1785!

    by Aardwolf
  • This is awesome! A few months ago I got a tattoo of one of the flowers from https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?page=LKBGE51F3...

    I’ve been variously told it looks like the sun, a hedgehog, and a lion & I’m kind fond of all those descriptions

    by una_usta
  • Very nice, i have a book in my library which you’ll find interesting.

    Jeremy Adler and Ulrich Ernst

    Text als Figur

    https://www.amazon.de/Text-als-Figur-Visuelle-Moderne/dp/352...

    It is full of pictures like you have collected.

    Example:

    https://imgur.com/a/mWL4kSs

    Sadly it seems this book is rather rare.

    by quakeguy
  • 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.
    by efitz
  • I noticed Asia is severely underrepresented. This is normal in western collections, but there are exceptions. You should find great examples from China, India, Indonesia, Iran (actually Muslim countries in general), Japan, and Vietnam. Some potential leads on works you haven't catalogued: (1) The collection search site for the Dutch 'Wereldmuseum' in Rotterdam, which houses the state collection (they were the first to Japan). (2) The same for Lisbon's Museu do Oriente. (3) International Dunhuang Project, affiliated with the British Library, which has scanned some of the earliest printed works in Asia with a good digital catalogue, some of which have graphic elements. (4) Musee Guimet, Paris. (5) The Print and Graphic Communication Museum in Lyon. (6) The National Technical Museum in Prague (great printing and photography holdings). (7) Asian art auction records. (8) Should you broaden to sculpture, many of the great Buddhist and Hindu carved stone monuments incorporate text with their form elements, though generally not integrally. (9) Chinese folk arts of paper-cut, embroidery (upholstery/cloth/fashion) and new year folk printed door poster art probably have some exceptional examples, as will some cast bronze sculptures such as temple incense burners.
    by contingencies
  • That's wonderful!

    I can also recommend a book from my library: Typoésie by Jérôme Peignot (Imprimerie nationale editions, Paris, 1993), ISBN 2-11-081272-9 (or newer edition 9782742757985).

    From the book description: The works of the great typographers of the 20th century are featured: Maximilien Vox, Cassandre’s “Bifur,” Piet Zwart, the Americans Martin Solomon and Herb Lubalin, Raymond Gid, and Guy Levis Mano. The book also showcases the visual poetry of the Germans Gomringer, Mon, and Rühm; the Brazilians de Campos and Pignatari; Emmet Williams; Christian Dotremont; and Jacques Roubaud; and the “typoems” by painters such as Matisse, Magritte, Duchamp, Lissitzky, Raymond Hains, Jiri Kollar, Jasper Johns, and Valerio Adami. Even mathematics and musical notation are included.

    by zvr

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