232 pages Text(s) by Niels Shoe Meulman and Carlo McCormick Designed by UNDOG 33 x 24 cm Language: English Paperback, hand signed with a Shoe tag, which forms an integral part of the typographic cover design Publisher: Ruyzdael Publishing First edition 2025
Shoe’s Black Book: Graffiti in the 1980s offers a window into an artist’s formative years. Before the galleries, the recognition, his development as a typographer and founding the Calligraffiti art movement, there was this: a worn and relentless black book filled with tags, pieces and outlines.
Between 1985 and 1987, Niels Shoe Meulman (Amsterdam, 1967) documented his growth from wide-eyed newcomer to an artist who has fully developed his own style.
More than just a sketchbook, this black book is a testament to when Shoe tagged along with New York artists like Rammellzee, Dondi White and Keith Haring. It’s a record of learning: part diary, part playground, part testing ground. Here is a facsimile of a book that was stolen and mysteriously returned. But it’s also adorned: Shoe’s additional notes and sharp recollections bring the era into focus.
Each page captures graffiti knowledge, passed down mouth-to-mouth and hand-to-hand. Shoe’s Black Book is both document and artefact: immediate, unpolished, authentic. While other books record a culture, this one helped build it.
