In some ‘Infant’ typefaces perhaps. Predictably, in italics ands scripts.

And some geometrics like VAG rounded and Avant Garde Gothic.

is it considered bad form then to create an ash with a single story a even if the font has a single story a?

Probably just difficult to differentiate from this œ when it is a single storey a.

Tim

Not really an issue, as they don’t both appear in the same language.
Mind you, if one comes across an unfamiliar Latin loan word that uses one of the ligatures, it is nice to be know exactly how it’s spelled.

The monocular "a" is already evil, nevermind the monocular "æ".

they don’t both appear in the same language.

I must be imagining Færœse then. :-)
(Not to mention French...)

hhp

Exactly Tim, that's why I'm trying to find well done examples.

Hrant, everybody loves to single story a, you know it.

Faeroese (føroyskt) uses æ but not œ. It uses ø instead, like Danish and Norwegian.

French uses œ, but æ is supposedly restricted to rare words of Greek or Latin origin and I don't recall seeing it used in the wild (I live in France).

The language that uses both æ and œ that you're looking for is of course traditional (19th century) English, with spellings like 'amœbæ'. This kind of spelling does persist with some rare words today, especially in British English, though I get the feeling that nowadays its use is mostly about æsthetic appeal and is likely to be the result of a manœuvre to give a mediæval touch to your œuvre.

Thanks for the insights.

Let me tell you guys a true story, "from the wild":
I used to use the UCLA libraries a lot (still do now and again) and I was checking out an issue of Quærendo. Nobody had checked it out before, so the lady needed to make a label for the inside back cover. Except she couldn't find it in the system. She kept typing Quoerendo. Check out the cover:
http://tinyurl.com/c3rekv2

Don't tell me that's good design.

hhp

… a manœuvre to give a mediæval touch to your œuvre.

Clever!

Nick Shinn,

You have to also make sure that IPA isn't in your future plan, though.
(luckily, it usually isn't)

Une “salade Caesar” avec 2 cœurs de salade romaine.