Tapisserie pâtisserie
Tapisserie is a bakery with two shops in Paris, France. The shop name, which translates to “tapestry”, is a Verlan wordplay on pâtisserie (cake shop/bakery). Their visual identity was designed by Thomas Jumin.
In their in-store shop in Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche sports a wall lettering which is equally layered. It is based on Stack and patiently handpainted on the shop’s handbaked wall tiles by sign painters Louis Lepais and Etienne Renard, who together form paint studio Ensignes Brillo. The stacked letters of Tapisserie are paired with “L’invité Sézane”, referring to clothing brand Sézane, rendered in some form of Caslon.
In the bakery logo, Stack is paired with the the Light style of Berliner Grotesk and the same typeface is is used on the windows of the bakery at the Rue de Charonne. In contrast with Stack, which looks like it was designed using a compass and ruler, Berliner Grotesk is an easier choice to render in paint: its outlines are bubbly by design.
It’s probably too far-fetched but I like to think that the typeface selection echoes the playful reversal of the bakery’s name, and in particular Berliner Grotesk: a typeface trying to look like lettering becomes lettering based on a typeface.
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The basis for the lettering is Peter Wiegel’s CAT Stack, which is quite different from the original by Les Lawrence. In this application, it’s evident in the much wider forms for the letters P and R.
Wiegel mentions that he took “a little bit of artistic license” and “strongly expanded” the character set – which is true: his version includes Cyrillic and Greek, in addition to many accented Latin characters. He also claims that Stack was available in metal. That’s incorrect: Stack originated as typeface for photosetting at, well, Face Photosetting.