Erik Berglund created this wooden ampersand in Type Two during winter term 2014. (Thanks to Taq Bleiler for the photograph). This gorgeous ampersand, inspired me to share a bit of its history.
“An ampersand (or epershand) is a logogram ‘&’ representing the conjunction word ‘and’. This symbol is a ligature of the letters et, Latin for ‘and’.” —Wikipedia
The modern ampersand (below) is virtually identical to that of the Carolingian minuscule. The italic ampersand, to the right, is originally a later et-ligature. —Wikipedia
Some modern fonts, like Trebuchet MS, employ ampersand characters that reveal its origin.
The ampersand can be traced back to the 1st century A.D. and the Old Roman cursive, in which the letters E and T occasionally were written together to form a ligature (figure 1). —Wikipedia
“In the later and more flowing New Roman Cursive, ligatures of all kinds were extremely common; figures 2 and 3 from the middle of 4th century are both examples of how the et-ligature could look in this script. However, during the following development of the Latin script that led up to the Carolingian minuscule (9th century), while the use of ligatures in general diminished, the et-ligature continued to be used and gradually became more stylized and less revealing of its origin (figures 4–6).[9]
The modern italic type ampersand is a kind of “et” ligature that goes back to the cursive scripts developed during the Renaissance. After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and Roman ampersands. Since the ampersand’s roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it.”
The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase “and (&) per se and", meaning "and (the symbol &) intrinsically (is the word) and”.[2] Traditionally, when reciting the alphabet in English-speaking schools, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself (“A”, “I”, and, at one point, “O”) was preceded by the Latin expression per se (“by itself”).[3][4][5] It was also common practice to add the “&” sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in “X, Y, Z, and per se and”. This last phrase was routinely slurred to “ampersand” and the term had entered common English usage by 1837.[4][6][7] —Wikipedia
Et ligature in Insular script (Insular script was a medieval script system originally used in Ireland, then Great Britain, that spread to continental Europe.)