Envelop aan Philip Zilcken before 1913

This is a very old envelope addressed to Philip Zilcken, probably created with pen and ink by François de Bas. I like to think about the way the artist’s hand moved to form these letters. There is a beautiful kind of dance between the writing and seeing. Writing isn’t just about getting the information across, it’s about being human. I wonder if he labored over the shape of those ‘Z’s or if they just flowed out of him? The little embellishments and flourishes give me the sense that he might have been thinking about the shapes as much as the words. There's something so intimate about seeing someone's handwriting. You get a sense of their personality. It’s a lot like drawing, really, because you feel the rhythm of the movement, you can almost see the artist thinking. It reminds me of Cy Twombly and other painters whose work involves writing, and how all these marks accumulate into an image, but they also are something else too!