August 29th, 2006
I got some good advice from Dick Margulis, which led to some tweaking and twiddling. The new version of the font know looks like this (compare it to the one somewhat lower on the page):

I did some more characters, and the result is overall nice, except for the G. I think that's a monstrosity, but perhaps it's best if you form you own opinion:

August 28th, 2006:
I started work on a new font, which gives a completely new meaning to the term "bold". This lettering was designed by architect Wijdeveld for a temporary showroom in Amsterdam, as I later found out. I saw a very small picture of the showroom in a book on early 20th century architecture, with the caption that this was made by Wijdeveld in Amsterdam. No further indication of where and when.
Sometimes you just need a stroke of luck, and mine came when archivalist Loek de Haan of the Municipal Archives in Amsterdam was sorting some photographs. He knew of my quest for the building and yes, he found it. It turned out to be a temporary building on Dam Square, right in the middle of Amsterdam.

In the above picture you see the font, advertising for a brand of margarine called Blue Band. The characters were probably made of wood, in the early twenties. I think this font has potential and although it looks fairly simple, it a h*ll of a job trying to create a complete alphabet. I'll give an example:

The A was so designed by Wijdeveld, BTW.

Reactions are - as always - most welcome!

Update #2, June 14th 2006

Yes, it took quite some time to complete the font Mokum Tooneel. Some health problems got in the way. But anyway the font is ready can be downloaded as a .ttf file from my downloadpage. To whet yout appetite I present a small glimpse of the new font:

In the meantime, work has started on a font called Mokum Kruyswijk, named after one of the lesser known architects of the Amsterdam School, Cornelis Kruyswijk. He lived from 1884 until 1935 and did some wonderful work, mostly in Amsterdam. To give an idea of his work I show you a part of the cover of a book, written by Radboud van Beekum and published recently by Thoth Publishers:

In the upper left hand corner is the lettering that Kruyswijk used and that will form the base of the new font. Enlarged it looks like this:

Update #1, April 30th, 2006

First, I have to change the name of the font. As Sander de Voogt from The Netherlands pointed out, the book cover was NOT designed by Wijdeveld. In stead, it was made by Anton Kurving, the person also responsible for the lettering on the blue mailbox that formed the basis for Mokum Giro. So, the font will be known under its new name Mokum Tooneel (Mokum Stage in English).

I redesigned some of the characters and added a partial upper case set. I will add the rest of the characters at a later stage.

After a long break I finally got around to do some more designing. I decided to temporarily suspend the work on Mokum Plons, in favor of a new font that I call Mokum Wijdeveld. This is based on the work of the Dutch architect Hendrik Wijdeveld (1885-1987). He often designed buildings and lettering in such a way that they formed a unit. He also did some stand alone typefaces. One of the examples of these is found in the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague. 

It is the cover of a booklet about Dutch actors and their work. I liked this font the moment I saw it, and decided to have a go at it. The initial and partial result can be seen here. I hope I succeeded in producing a font that is "heavy but not depressing". As always, you be the judge.

ristcard @ hotmail . com (omit spaces when mailing)

The font Mokum Betondorp is finished, and can be downloaded as a .ttf file from my downloadpage

TEMPORARILY DELAYED
Now I'm working on a new font, initial name Mokum Plons (in which Mokum stands for Amsterdam and Plons is the Dutch word for 'splash'.) The font is modeled from the wrought iron lettering found on the oldest municipal swimming pool in Amsterdam, as shown in the following picture:

When the swimming pool was constructed (around 1929), the name was bolted to the upper facade. During a later reconstruction the name was taken down, painted yellow and fixed to a new tile wall. The name HET SPORTFONDSENBAD can be freely  translated as 'pool of the combined sports committees'.
The lettering in detail looks like this:

The detail I like most, the intertwining of neighbouring characters, poses the biggest puzzle as well. I'm working on that and will publish regular progress reports.

Richard Keijzer

ristcard @ hotmail . com (omit spaces when mailing)