Do It Yourself
PUT YOUR OWN STAMP ON IT Amsterdam-based children’s book illustrator Gertie Jaquet has always had a love of stamp making. Her favorite kinds are simple eraser prints that remind her of something inspiring. HOW MANY CHILDREN’S BOOKS DO YOU HAVE TO YOUR NAME NOW? More than 150, I think. It sounds like a lot, but I’ve been doing it since 1983. IT STILL SOUNDS LIKE A LOT. HOW MANY OF THOSE DID YOU WRITE AND ILLUSTRATE? I wrote the text of four books myself, but the other books were illustrations of other people’s texts. I’ve done more than 25 books with one particular writer, Annemarie Bon, and we made a whole series about a hare called Haas (which is “hare” in Dutch). I’m working on the fourteenth book in that series now. I just love the character. HOW DID YOU FIND EACH OTHER? We met a long time ago. She was working for a Dutch children’s magazine and I was doing illustrations for it. We met at a New Year’s cocktail party, and I said I liked the stories very much. She told me she liked my pictures, and that was the start of a very long collaboration. That was twenty years ago. YOU DRAW THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY HAND, BUT YOU ALSO USE STAMPS IN THE IMAGES. Yes, I combine things; I make the illustrations with pen or brush and soft pastels and I use stamps for some elements. For example, if I do an underwater scene, I make the background with plants or fishes from stamps and I combine those with drawings. Not in every illustration, but I like to use stamps especially for plants. WHY PLANTS? When you stamp them, it looks as if they’re growing. It becomes very natural. The image made by a stamp is a bit transparent and
inexact. For example, when I’m drawing with a pen I choose the exact spot to draw. But when I use a stamp it can be a little more organic looking. Sometimes it’s a thick stamp and sometimes it’s thinner and more transparent. That’s how plants look when they grow. HAVE YOU ALWAYS USED STAMPS IN ADDITION TO ILLUSTRATION FOR YOUR BOOKS? No, I started using them about five years ago. I was making a textbook about mathematics – accounting for young children – and I had to make a repetition of images, just simple ones. I thought that if I used a stamp it would make sense. I always have erasers lying around my desk, everywhere, so thought I’d try to cut one out of an eraser. It worked well. HOW DID YOU COME TO HAVE AN INTEREST IN STAMPS? I always loved stamps when I was small. I used to play post office with my sisters and I just loved to stamp with ready-made stamps or simple forms. I think what appealed to me was the repetition, the gesture of doing it, stamping. When I make the stamps myself, what I especially like is that the lines are not the same as when I draw with a pen or a pencil. They surprise me. It’s as if someone else did them, and you don’t have power over it all. The stamp has a will of its own, and that’s what I like. I can’t control everything; it’s more of a surprise, and that’s what makes me happy. Also, cutting a stamp is very relaxing. I like to do it when I have finished a drawing for a commission, just to relax. IT SOUNDS SORT OF MEDITATIVE. Yeah, it is. You can become addicted. I am.
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