Karel Martens: Love Letters

We love envelopes. We even had a show of them and tried to get one from Karel Martens. No dice. But here’s a selection of forty-four envelopes for the letters that Martens sent to his love, Lous, between 1962 and 1963. They were manually printed during the time he was stationed in the drawing room of the Welfare Service in the Frederik Hendrik Barracks for his military service,* tasked with designing a poster titled “Don’t croak about the military service matters, the enemy is listening.” A sweet meditation on paper, ink, color, and pattern.

*In case you don’t know your Dutch military barracks history, that was in Nijmegen.