A fleuron flower is a typographic element, or glyph, used originally as an ornament for typographic compositions — often, for example, to compose borders on title pages of historic books. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French word floron for flower.[1] Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms “horticultural dingbats.”
Fleurons were crafted the same way as other typographic elements were: as individual metal sorts that could be fit into the printer’s compositions alongside letter and numbers. This saved the printer time and effort in producing ornamentation. The fact that the sorts could be produced in multiples meant that printers could build up borders with repeating patterns of fleurons.
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