20 YEARS AGO

2007

In 2007, Henk bought back his 1987 PTT Christmas stamps from a stamp dealer in large numbers as individual stamps, 20 years after they had been released. They are five different designs that were released simultaneously in five separate stamp booklets, each with four identical stamps, which was unique at the time. He then makes this work with the repurchased stamps. From top left to bottom left, the five stamps in blocks of four, as in the stamp books, are pasted one below the other, always in the same order. Arrived at the bottom, he continues in the next column above. This creates the special diagonal color shifts. Of course, for the sake of accuracy, a grid was drawn first.

The assignment for these stamps was the TURNING POINT in Henk's career. Because he enjoyed designing them so much, he decided, in addition to his teaching position, to make purely autonomous work from now on: analogue structures in which something special or unexpected happens due to a chance factor.

A little more about the Christmas stamps themselves. When Henk had designed this in 1987 and went to look at the printing company, he discovered that something was not right, but what was not immediately clear to him. After much questioning, it was admitted that the image was reduced by 15%. Henk had precisely matched the design of the structures to the distance of the edge perforations. This was no longer correct and the colors also looked less strong. A difficult dilemma. Should he stop the presses or not. More than 80 million copies would be printed and they were well on their way…..