When, in 1900, the confectioner's Droste (established in Haarlem in 1863) put their new product Cacao on the market, they introduced their first logo: 'De Verpleegster' (the nurse). In 1923 Jan Wiegman (1884-1963) was commissioned to design a new logo. He designed, as a newspaper described in 1931 a "Ridder-schildknaap met een Droste-pastille als romp" (a knight shield-bearer with a Droste-pastille as torso). This logo was such a succes that Droste approached, among others, Cassandre whose first poster design for Droste was the Droste's Verpleegster Cacao (1929). This design was so well received that Droste commissioned him to restyle Wiegman's logo too. This image relates closely to his poster L'Intrasigeant (1925). It is composed of circles and straight lines and combines, in an ingenious way, characters with an image to form a complete concept
The logo, which was dubbed Meneer Altijd Welkom (Mr. Always Welcome) has been used in various forms by Droste until 1980.
Few of the illuminating objects were made. Those that were, were put at the disposal of retailers of Droste articles upon payment of a deposit.

The avantgarde designer A.M. Cassandre (1901-1968) was born as Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron in Charkow (Ukraine). In 1923 he designed his first poster and was nominated at the' Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs' in Paris in 1925. His first commissions in the Netherlands date from 1927 and were mainly with the Rotterdam publicity agency Nijgh & Van Ditmar. Other firms for which he designed posters are Philips, Van Nelle, RAI and Holland-Amerika Lijn.

See illustration