Collars and Cuffs on the Nieuwendijk Painting

This plaque, outside Hofhuis & Co, is a wonderful relic from the grand old age of retail. It does have to be acknowledged that the shop’s surroundings along with its inventory do not appear to have retained the lustre of its facade. The content of the shopwindow is dusty and is, in the main, made up of ‘work apparel’ although the good selection of tweed caps offers evidence of a more illustrious past. I do feel a great affinity with these once grand stores now in decline, not just because they remind me of the shops that populated the high streets of my youth, but because like them, I bounce along the uneven road service of progress like a stubborn old tin can being dragged behind the white Rolls Royce of modernity. Always reluctantly moving forward yet perpetually a couple of decades behind. This plaque is one of four distributed around the shop’s frontage. Polished black stone in a white painted sculpted surround with hand cut lettering picked out in gold. The plaque announces the availability of shirtfronts, collars and cuffs for purchase, with the other three plaques reflecting similar themes. It is unquestionably beautiful, defiant amidst the discount displays and clutter of the modern city, a proud reminder of a bygone age of elegant purveyance. It must surely be an indication of the complete confidence that their way of life would endure and that there was no possibility of change that they would literally set their products in stone. It is ironic indeed that these plaques do so much resemble tombstones.