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A printed leaf or flower used as an ornament or a divider.
Also known as: Printers' flower, Aldus leaf, Leaf shape between paragraphs
A stylised leaf, cast as type and set like a character. Printers used them to fill space, divide sections and build borders out of repeated units — decoration made from the same physical parts as the text.
A stylised leaf or flower cast as a piece of type, set as a section divider, a paragraph mark or a repeating unit in a border.
Ornament made from the same physical material as the text, which is why borders in early printed books are built from a small number of shapes repeated and mirrored rather than engraved as a whole.
The heart-shaped ivy leaf, the hedera, is the oldest form and descends from a mark used in Greek and Roman inscriptions to separate words or sections.
from antiquity
A small solid leaf shape with a curved stem, sometimes with lobes or curling tips, set centred or in a repeating row.