Inside Shoe’s Black Book: The Roots of Calligraffiti

Before Calligraffiti became a global language, there was just a kid from Amsterdam filling a black book with tags, outlines, and borrowed tricks from the masters. Shoe’s Black Book − Graffiti in the 1980s is the facsimile of that raw beginning: the years 1985–1987, when Niels Shoe Meulman learned, absorbed, imitated, failed, tried again — and slowly carved out his own line.

This was the period when Shoe was tagging alongside Rammellzee, Dondi White and Keith Haring. A black book stolen and mysteriously returned, now turned into a transmission device: part diary, part playground, part testing ground for a culture still taking shape. Page after page, you see a wide-eyed newcomer becoming a signature — and how a simple sketchbook can turn into a foundational artefact.

Published by Ruyzdael Publishing, all the books comes hand-signed, each with a Shoe tag that’s built directly into the cover design.

Niels Shoe Meulman will be at Le Grand Jeu on December 13 for a special signing of Shoe’s Black Book, diving back into those electric years when everything was being invented in real time.

📖 Shoe’s Black Book — Book signing with Niels Shoe Meulman
🗓 Saturday, December 13, 2025 | 🕓 From 4:00 PM
📍 Le Grand Jeu, 15 Passage de Ménilmontant, Paris 11