Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art
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…
Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art launched on June 16, 2026 with 162 votes, #198 of 22,647 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Garden of Flowers is a browseable archive of pictorial typography created from metal type, ornaments, and rules, spanning from the 1600s to modern times. It contains approximately 2,500 images collected over eight years to document the history of text-based visual art before ASCII art, with particular focus on letterpress printing as a precursor to digital text art. The archive draws primarily from public digital collections and is searchable online.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
An archive of ~2500 pictorial typography and letterpress works spanning four centuries, images composed entirely of type ornaments, characters, and rule. The history of ASCII art before computers.
In the maker’s words, at launch
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…
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