Get your personalised stamp in Gommy Stamps

Gommy Stamps is one of those shops where you stand in front of the window, surveying all the curiosities before you, and think "I'll definitely be able to get an original personalised stamp here."

The Dutch owners, Linda Borkulo and Marco Verkuijl, recently moved their shop from Uccle to Lakensestraat/rue de Laeken, a location in the centre of the city that has a reputation for the artisanal crafts of yesteryear. If you ask them what they sell, they describe their products as "everything you need to personalise things".

Whether you're looking for a copper door sign for your new doctor's office, a stamp with your signature as a busy businessman, a seal stamp to seal important documents, or an embossing stamp to personalise your letter paper, you'll find it all right here. Incidentally, a personalised stamp makes for a very original birthday present!

Marco Verkuijl, the child of a generation of stamp makers, insists that the art of stamp making will not be lost and that his products are all meticulously crafted. "If you want quick and bland uniformity, try the internet," he adds. He receives his guests like a good host, in his slippers and at a long wooden table between cupboards full of dozens of little drawers.

Everything is possible, or almost at least. All the products are made the old-fashioned way in the studio in the cellar, though modern laser techniques are never far away. Stamps evoke a nostalgic sentiment. The feeling of pressing a wooden stamp into an inkpad and then printing it on pristine white paper makes you feel as though you're making something personal. That you are leaving your stamp on something.

And with a stamped Manneken Pis in the shop window, these neighbours from the North, have more than expressed their love for the city.

ma/lu/Mo > do/je/Th: 07.30 > 18.00
vr/ve/Fr: 07.30 > 14.00