Ampersand Variations

This is a really cool poster I found online of different ampersands, all at the same point size. What’s interesting to me is that very few of them actually look like an ‘e’ & ‘t’ combined. I’m curious to know how our modern recognization of ampersands became so abstract, or differentiated from what it originally is supposed to portray. What’s also interesting is that the fancier typefaces’ ampersands look more like an ‘e’ & ‘t’ combined than the more casual or playful typefaces. Most of these I can’t even tell that there are supposed to be two letterforms in the design, so I wonder what made that happen? Overall, it’s still a very cool symbol and interesting to look at and try to dissect.