Via Languagehat I discovered this Atlantic article on the Eerie Beauty of Rare Alphabets. A writer carves letters from little-known alphabets into wood and outlines them in ink. The commenters are split about evenly between questioning the author's loose definition of 'alphabet' and marvelling at the beauty of the pieces. The Atlantic writer opens by commenting on the difference in appearance between offset and letterpress type. The article from the very beginning focuses more on the physical beauty of letters than their ability to convey meaning.
I've actually always been a sucker for this. I have a somewhat dilatory interest in inscriptions and papyrology (as I blogged about previously) that has a lot to do with the aesthetic appeal of these objects. Oh sure, they preserve authentic spellings and pronunciations, they are the major means of discovering new works by ancient authors. But they're also pretty. The combination of visual appeal with the weighty or poignant meaning that many ancient inscriptions often carry is irresistible to a romantic mind (and as one of my grad school professors used to say, all classicist are also romantics).
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