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The HoltHammer Cycles Logo

The "skull" logo I design for my motorcycle shop, HoltHammer Cycles. To explain the design a bit: from my nickname from Red Lodge, MT of "Bone Danny" the logo had to have bones, the skull & cross bones. From the Bone Daddy Custom Cycle logo in Red Lodge which I work for 4 years, comes the motorcycle jacket collar. The lightning bolt eyes come from the Holtkamp Electric logo that was a family business that started in 1920. Finally, the maul heads from the name of the shop HoltHammer. The word Holthammer is a Dutch word for maul. HoltHammer comes from the split of Holtkamp (my last name) & Gramshammer (my wife's last name). So that's how that logo came about.


Addendum:

Originally when I found the meaning of the word Holthammer as a Dutch word for maul, I thought about tying that meaning and its Dutch origin to the Holtkamp Electric lightning bolts. This brought the Thor maul heads to the design along the lightning bolts from Holtkamp Electric ... Thor the god lightning.

The original meaning of Holthammer was found on the internet around 2007 as a Dutch word for maul. I did some more internet searches around 2017 and found out from a book that I came across "German American Contribution to Richmond's Development 1833-1933" by Donald M. Royer that explains that the word Holthammer is mallet in a German dialect called Platt Deutch. The irony comes that my Dad's family language before their immigrating from Germany was Platt Deutch. This was the dialect that my Dad spoke until my Grandfather decided that the family would only speak English. This dialect is from north western Germany close to the Netherlands hence the first reference as a Dutch word found in 2007.


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