Swiss Post Office launches wooden stamp
There have been Swiss stamps smelling of chocolate and made of lace, and now there’s one with an Alpine forest feel.
Swiss Post on Thursday launched its latest unusual commemorative stamp – a square of pinewood roughly the thickness of a credit card.
Designed by Thomas Rathgeb, a Swiss Post graphic artist, the stamps are made from 120-year-old pines felled in northern Switzerland. They have a face value of 5 Swiss francs, or 4 dollars.
“Rathgeb’s design focuses on the sustainability and uniqueness of this natural, living material. The structure of the wood, integrated into the contemporary design, produces a different picture on each stamp. This makes each stamp unique, just as each tree is unique,” Swiss Post said.
In 2001, Swiss Post produced a scratch-and-sniff stamp that looked like a square of chocolate on an open foil wrapper. A chocolate scent was sealed in tiny capsules in the stamp.
A year earlier, it released a stamp edged with lace to celebrate northwest Switzerland’s traditional lace-making industry.
The wooden stamps, which celebrate Switzerland’s lumber industry, are available on the Swiss Post Web site. They go on sale at post offices Sept 7.
