Elixir De Kempenaar Vintage Advertising Poster, 1908
Elixir De Kempenaar Vintage Advertising Poster, 1908
Elixir De Kempenaar, created by an anonymous designer in 1908, turns a winter excursion into a spirited advertisement for a beverage brand. Three smiling women in traditional Dutch dress skate towards the viewer, their blue and green skirts flaring above bright blades and their red-orange shawls enlivening the cold landscape. Between them hangs the commercial key to the scene: a woven basket filled with labelled bottles. Above, the brand name appears in large decorative serif lettering, its icicle-like embellishments cleverly extending the wintry theme into the typography itself.
Likely produced for a Dutch product or company, the poster belongs to an era in which advertising was becoming an increasingly prominent part of public visual culture. By 1908, the printed commercial poster had developed into a particularly direct form of communication, designed to establish a memorable identity through bold words, strong colour and an easily grasped scene. Here the product is not presented in isolation. Instead, it is woven into an appealing narrative of sociability, movement and seasonal pleasure, with the three skaters acting simultaneously as characters, product-bearers and agents of recognition.
A closer look
The women form a compact procession across the centre of the design. Their close spacing gives the group a nearly symmetrical rhythm, yet differences in pose and expression prevent it from becoming static. Each figure appears caught mid-glide, with bent knees, angled feet and gently billowing garments suggesting momentum over the ice. The central woman carries the basket at the visual heart of the composition, ensuring that the bottles remain conspicuous without interrupting the animation of the scene.
Colour does much of the poster’s work. Cool blues dominate the skirts, ice and wintry distance, while saturated reds and oranges gather around the women’s shoulders. These warm areas stand sharply against the paler setting, drawing attention first to the figures and then down towards the basket. Small decorative patterns within the shawls reward closer inspection, as do the women’s individually rendered, cheerful faces. Beneath them, restrained streaks and reflections animate the frozen surface, giving the skates a convincing sense of speed.
The background is softer and less defined than the foreground. Snow-covered trees and what appears to be a windmill establish a rural Dutch setting without competing with the principal action. This subdued distance also heightens the graphic clarity of the skaters, whose contours and clothing remain crisply distinguished. A narrow light-brown border contains the entire design, while the large title occupies the upper register like a sign suspended above the landscape. The icicles hanging from the letters are a particularly playful touch: branding, ornament and weather are made into a single graphic device.
Context and significance
Early twentieth-century beverage advertising frequently relied on more than a straightforward representation of a bottle. Products were associated with recognisable settings, desirable pastimes and figures capable of attracting attention in a crowded street or shopfront. Elixir De Kempenaar follows that logic with considerable economy. The basket makes the commercial purpose explicit, but the skaters provide the memorable idea: the brand is attached to camaraderie, vitality and a distinctly seasonal Dutch scene.
The anonymous designer balances illustration and typography with unusual liveliness. The figures offer narrative charm, the limited yet vivid palette supplies immediate impact, and the lettering secures the product name at a glance. What remains most engaging is the seamlessness of this construction. Even the smallest details—the patterned shawls, visible bottle labels, glints on the ice and frozen embellishments above—serve the same cheerful winter proposition.
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