A couple of weeks ago my daughter surprised me with a gift of a little stamp set shaped like a pour-over coffee pot. She purchased it at a pop-up in the Kensington neighbourhood of Calgary. The filter part is a rubber stamp of a word balloon saying “Hello” and the pot is a stamp of a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly it is from a Japanese company, Decole Co. Ltd., although it is made in China. I have written before about my love of cute Asian stationery products and this little set fits right in.
Decole does not sell products directly to consumers, either over the internet or at a retail store, you have to find a dealer. It’s a small company (less than 20 employees) and is based in Japan’s third largest city, Nagoya. Fun fact, Nagoya has been featured in three Godzilla movies and in the anime The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki.
Using stamps to mark documents goes way back into antiquity but the first use of rubber stamps in an artistic way is linked to Russian poets who were part of the Futurists Movement at the beginning of the 20th century. They made what we would now call mixed media books, blending writing, sketching, and rubber stamping along with other media.
The modern decorative rubber stamp industry got going in the 1940’s when American artist Ray Johnson started what became known as the mail art movement. He was part of the Neo-Dada and early Pop art scene in New York City and loved designing absurdist stamps to use on his projects. This little coffee stamp seems a long way from the avant garde beginnings of decorative rubber stamps.
If this stamp set were a person they would be an artist working as a barista always greeting the regulars in a friendly, perky way.
Margret puts pen to paper 