Four Balloon-Spoked Asterisk

Between passages it marks a pause; beside a heading it adds decoration.

Printer’s flowers, or fleurons, are book ornaments rooted in manuscript and binding decoration. In early printing, they were cut in wood or cast in metal to mark chapter openings and endings, divide sections, or fill blank space. A related fleuron appeared on a binding from the Aldine press, a book printer’s workshop, in 1499 and as a printed ornament in 1515. The 1499 and 1515 examples document the broader tradition, not the exact origin of ✣. Ornament arrangements can help identify a printer or date a book, a use noted in a 2021 database project.