Brief aan Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk Possibly 1902 - 1910

Antoon Derkinderen wrote this letter to Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk in 1902, on what looks like regular writing paper with dark ink. The thing about a handwritten letter is you get so much from the marks – you can imagine the pressure on the nib, the scratching, the tiny variations that create something really intimate. Even though I can't read the Dutch, I can see the overall texture of the writing, areas where the letters are bunched together, and other areas where they're spread out. Maybe this shows the speed or mood of the writer, right? It reminds me of Cy Twombly, whose mark making can read as both writing and pure abstraction, where the meaning is open and ambiguous. Derkinderen was clearly in conversation with the art of his time, so maybe this is a little bit of symbolism and abstraction creeping into the everyday. Isn’t it amazing how even the most functional things can be beautiful?