What is this symbol in LaTeX? And where do I get it?

Question

I'm referring to this symbol I find every now and then, in a book, to separate the first few initial paragraphs of a chapter from the rest.

Answer 1

It's hard to judge the scale of your fleuron, but you can design something similar using the TikZ calligraphy library.

In the code below, the \pen command defines the angle (30°) and width (2mm) of a "calligraphic pen". The \calligraphy command works like \draw except using the defined pen. You can adjust the design however you like.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calligraphy}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\pen (0,0) -- (30:.2);
\calligraphy (0,0) to[out=30, in=210] ++(2,0)
            (30:.25)to[out=30, in=210] ++(2,0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

You may want to put this into a macro so you can use it repeatedly throughout the book. You can adjust the spacing above and below.

Change the scale factor to adjust size.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz, lipsum}
\usetikzlibrary{calligraphy}
\newcommand{\myfleuron}{\vspace{5mm}% <-- additional space above
    {\centering
    \tikz[baseline=-.68ex, scale=.15] % <-- adjust size of fleuron here]
    {\pen (0,0) -- (30:.2);
    \calligraphy (-1,0) to[out=30, in=210] ++(2,0)([xshift=-1cm]30:.25)to[out=30, in=210] ++(2,0);}
    \par}\vspace{5mm}% <-- additional space below
}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[2]
\myfleuron
\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

Answer 2

I used only PDF primitive operations to create the symbol. \pdfliteral primitive from pdftex is used. We need not TikZ.

The symbol: \pdfliteral{q 1 0 0 .8 5 0 cm
   0 0 m 20 10 40 10 50 0 c 60 -10 80 -10 90 -5 c
   70 -15 50 -12 40 0 c 30 12 15 5 0 0 c h f
   .8 0 0 1 -5 -3 cm
   0 0 m 20 10 40 10 50 0 c 60 -10 80 -10 90 -10 c
   70 -15 50 -12 40 0 c 30 12 15 5 0 0 c h f
Q}
\bye