Download nowPublisher: Three Islands PressYears ago, I developed an interest in the Japanese art of dwarfed potted trees, bonsai. I bought some books 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 on 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 has two styles, a roman and a true italic; OpenType features include true small capitals, old-style and lining figures, numerous ligatures, and support for Central/Eastern European alphabets.
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