Disused Postal Slots on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal Painting

This triptych depicts a detail from the former Main Post Office at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. It is a wonderfully elegant Neo-Gothic pile. It was completed around the turn of the nineteenth century and was created to house the headquarters of the Dutch Post Office. Like many similar buildings, it suffers from a modern dichotomy of sorts, on the one hand you want to preserve the building in all its palatial splendor, but on the other, the building always seems too grand for anything for which it can be used. At present it houses a shopping mall. However it is not the grandeur of this edifice that captivates me, it is the little things. This building boasts a wealth of anomalous embellishments and curious decorative details. This triptych depicts, what I can only assume are, the original postal slots. I have also surmised that they were for the purpose of separating letters bound for the Inland, the City and my favourite, ‘Foreign Lands’. I have painted them as they are now, in ascending height on a staircase, but I suspect these stairs are a latter day addition and they were originally on a single level. I love the absolute whimsy of posting your letters through the mouths of stone giants and I am left to wonder if these were in fact an attempt to characterise the places for which the mail was bound.