Bonsai Roman

A good while ago I developed an interest in the Japanese art of dwarfed potted trees, bonsai. I bought some old pamphlets on the subject from Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In one—“Handbook on Bonsai: Special Techniques” (seventh printing, February 1976)—the type was bad. Old worn lead type, I suspect, spread wide in the tops of characters and disappearing at the bottoms. Two decades later, I came across my Brooklyn Botanic Garden collection and was struck again by this interesting type. Inspired, I made a typeface. Didn't take me long to decide on a name for it either: a name with a double-meaning, based both on its look and its inspiration. Bonsai Roman is one of two styles of the typeface; they both come with more than 800 glyphs—including true small caps, lining and old-style figures, lots o’ ligatures, fractions, currency symbols, and support for Central/Eastern European languages.