Krulletters and bruin cafés in Amsterdam

This article addresses lettering and signpainting as an important element of visual culture. Following the model of scholarly studies grounded in typographic and architectural history, the article focuses on a set of Amsterdam shop signs painted in a style identified as Krulleletters (“curly letters”), typically associated with the city's bruin cafes (“brown cafes”). The analysis presents this elegant writing as related to a local tradition, and positions it within its social and cultural context in order to explain its visual relevance. Broadly based on Dutch Mannerist calligraphy of the seventeenth century, the Krulleletters appeared for the first time in the early 1950s, probably the creation of lettering artist J.W.J. Visser. The style was soon imitated and, over the last thirty years, owing notably to the work of signpainter Leo Beukeboom, it gradually established a “new” graphic tradition. Krulleletters are visible on numerous cafe windows around Amsterdam, thereby contributing to the city's visual identity. Next to examining its formal attributes and origins, the authors document the typical trade practice of lettering artists, at a time when this craft is rapidly disappearing from urban centers under pressure from the now ubiquitous die-cut vinyl technology.