Raumausstatter Stallecker, Raabs
In 2025, the Typographische Gesellschaft Austria (Typographic Society Austria, tga) organized the anniversary edition of what is one of the best typography conferences I’ve attended. The symposium took place in late August on Burg Raabs an der Thaya – which is, hands down, the most spectacular venue for such an event.
Visiting the symposium allowed me to revisit some of the places I had photographed on previous occasions. This includes the script lettering on the former shop of Josef Stallecker on Hauptplatz, the municipality’s main square. On two sides of the single-story building, it mentions his profession, “Sattler Tapezierer” (“upholsterer, decorator”), and the areas of services, “Polstermöbel Bodenbelag” (“upholstered furniture, floor covering”).
With their reluctant connections and the crammed m, the low-contrast letterforms reminded me of IBM Script, a monospaced script made in the 1960s for the IBM Selectric typewriter. However, the actual source is another three decades older than that: the unknown sign maker patterned the letterforms after Signal, a foundry typeface first cast by Berthold in 1931. Its slightly awkward shapes – strung like beads on a string, with built-in connectors – have to do with the fact that metal script typefaces from that era were produced to have no overhangs, so that no delicate parts would break in the stereotyping process.
The lettering was engraved into the plaster and then painted in. I’m not sure what happened to “Josef” and “Sattler” – were these words left uncolored? Did they use a different color that faded away over the years?
Established in 1912 (by Josef’s parents?), the family business is currently run by Thomas Stallecker. It’s now located about 200 m to the west, still at Hauptplatz. The painted sign on the yellow façade reads “Raumausstatter Stallecker” (“interior decorator”) and uses Tintoretto. This bicolor typeface – a shaded variant of Aldo Manutio – was issued by Schelter & Giesecke in 1894. It got a new lease of life after Letraset issued their version in the early 1970s. Stallecker uses it in two shades of brown, with an underline for good measure.
For comparison, a resetting of the words in FDI Lettograph. This 2024 digitization is largely faithful to the original, with the exception of the p. In Signal, this letter is open at the bottom, as in German school script models (and also in formal scripts).
Metal Signal came with two forms for the lowercase r, but without one that omits the exit stroke (FDI Lettograph automatically inserts such a contextual alternate, see above). The sign painter invented an optimized terminal form for “Sattler”, but didn’t use it for “Tapezierer”. In “Stallecker”, they made up for it with an impromptu swash.
The business’s new location with the name in bichromatic Tintoretto
View of Raabs, with the castle – the conference venue featuring the tga’s pink flag – in the background
