Brief aan jonkheer Hendrik Teding van Berkhout (1879-1969) Possibly 1932

Here's a letter written in Amsterdam on January 17th, 1932, by Ton Meyer to Hendrik Teding van Berkhout. I imagine him hunched over a desk with a leaky pen in his hand. I wonder what Meyer was thinking when he wrote to Teding. I like the way the ink pools and gathers in certain spots, creating these dark, almost velvety textures against the stark white of the page. It feels intimate, like a whispered secret. The looping strokes of Meyer's pen seem so deliberate, each word carefully formed. You can almost feel the weight of the ink on the page, the way it might have bled slightly as he pressed down. It makes me think about the act of writing as a form of drawing, each letter a gesture, each word a brushstroke. I love how painting and writing are both ways of making marks that leave traces of ourselves. It's like Meyer is saying, "I was here, I thought this," in these careful, beautiful strokes.