And by carving in relief, they harnessed shadows to help define the letterforms. To fit text into rows, the carvers employed various means: they cut narrow slits for counters they nested and wrapped letters they stuffed abbreviations into nooks and crannies they created ligatures from overlaid shapes. Intricate relief inscriptions covered the gravestones, sticking to a precise format incorporating borders, iconography, strict grids of rows, and thick ridges between lines. There, they learned of the Armenian Cemetery of Surat, a collection of roughly two hundred gravestones-the only remaining trace of a vibrant Armenian community that first pioneered foreign trade and commerce in India, ultimately settling there in the sixteenth century.

In 2016, Armenian type designer Gor Jihanian and some friends traveled to Surat, a once-thriving port city in the western state of Gujarat, India. A nearly lost sliver of history resurfaces in Gor Jihanian’s translation of DJR’s mazelike display face.

Armenian letters font