Wooly hat stamp

This unconventionally shaped “Wollhaube” (“wooly hat”) stamp was issued by Die Post, the Austrian postal service in February 2022, as the second in a series of winter-themed novelty stamps. Like the first one titled “Fäustling” (“mitten”) which used special transfer printing technology, it was designed by David Gruber and produced by Joh. Enschedé Stamps B.V.

The font in use is Fruktur, a modernized blackletter, or more accurately, an upright italic dressed like a blackletter. I applaud David Gruber’s choice: Fruktur sits at the sweet spot between rustic alpine and hip contemporary. It would have looked better in mixed case, though: most blackletter-flavored typefaces aren’t particularly well-suited for the use in all caps. Fruktur is an early design by Viktoriya Grabowska, which she finalized after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland in 2010. Together with the related Kavoon and other designs, Fruktur was released with Sorkin Type and made available via Google Fonts in 2013.

Viktoriya was born in 1988 in Simferopol (Ukrainian: Сімферополь), the second-largest city on the Crimean Peninsula.