About

More than 20 years ago I got interested in graffiti and tagging. It was in the end of the 1980s when it became very popular in my class to write one´s name or “I was here” with permanent marker on tables, walls and everything else what seems to be adequate for writing on with permanent marker. The most popular ones were permanent markers from the famous German brand “edding”. The fad of writing one´s nickname or just “I was here” didn´t last very long, but influenced from graffiti tags in our neighborhood I and a couple of other guys started tagging.

I don´t want to write much about Graffiti but for those who aren´t familiar with the subject, graffiti is just about getting one´s name well-known on a large scale all over the city. What I was doing 20 years ago was at this early stage just tagging, no graffiti art in the narrow sense. My favorite tools for tagging were markers. Markers are easy to handle, don´t make any noise, other than spray cans for instance. And I loved (and still love) the opportunities of calligraphy style appearance. Well, my parent didn´t like tagging so much and they checked every time when I was leaving our house if I had any marker with me. So what could I do? Get every second day a new one! Sometimes I managed smuggling the new markers back home; sometimes I hide them outside. After I while I had a huge collection of markers of all kind of types. Wherever I was, I was looking for some markers suitable for tagging or doing sketches. And I found some really old markers back from the 1970s, long forgotten in some dark corners of dusty stationary shops… When I got the first – in Germany at that time hard to get – Artline Poster Markers with its huge 20 or 30mm nibs they were for many years the only markers I used for tagging. In the meanwhile I had also turned away from tagging to more artistic colorful painting… The markers from the beginning were already forgotten at this time. Several years ago I quit doing graffiti at all, ´cause it doesn´t fit with studying and working.

Recently I discovered that there are people collecting markers. That was kind of surprising since most people I know just throw used markers away. However, I kept almost every single marker I ever got… and some may be worth seeing, for those who are interested in markers…

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