I eventually reduced my test case to this more concise demonstration in Mondrian Easel... view shape rectangle width: 40; text: #yourself. view node: 'R1'. view shape ellipse width:40; text: #yourself. view node: 'E1'. The Principle Of Least Surprise suggests that both nodes R1 & E1 would render text in a similar way - but they don't. After spending most of a frustrating day trying to trace down the discrepancy, I discovered that rectangle is treated differently to every other shape that is rendered by ConcreteShapeVisitor. This inconsistency is particularly apparent when comparing #visitEllipseShape and #visitRoundedRectangleShape with #visitRectangleShape. The latter deals with a lot more than drawing a rectangle and perhaps would be more correctly named to be #visitRectangleAndLabelShape. A few naive* observations then... + it seems that the #text: method actually has no effect on shapes other than rectangle, and so should perhaps report an error like 'Not implemented, use forms instead.' + for consistency, 'view shape rectangleAndLabel' seems more appropriate than just 'view shape rectangle' + the label stuff would seem better split off from rectangle + rather than 'view shape label' creating a rectangle with no border, #label might be able to be applied to any shape and automatically build a form including the original shape. *I share these ideas without fully understanding the Mondrian architecture. If I am told they are poor ideas, then I learn something. I did manage to work out most of what I needed with forms. I provide an example you might want to add to Mondrian Easel > Examples > builder ... view shape form: [:b | b column; fill; row; fill. b x:1 y:1 add: (MOEllipseShape new fillColor: Color lightGreen; width: 80 ; height: 80). b x:1 y:1 add: (MORectangleShape new withoutBorder; withText ; fillColor: Color transparent ). ]. view node: ' labels other than rectangles '. cheers, -ben Ben Coman wrote: