The Biggest Little Collection – five leather stamps for Reno, Nevada
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
The arch over Virginia Street has called Reno the biggest little city in the world for close to a century, and the town has spent that century proving both halves. We spent August pressing the argument into leather – five designs, one city. We call it the Biggest Little Collection.
First, the arch itself. We drew the gateway bulb by bulb, RENO in the crown and the whole boast along the band, and pressed it on luggage tags – so the city can greet a bag at any carousel the way it greets everyone on Virginia Street. Poppy red and golden tan carry it blind. On the black tag the gold foil does what the arch does after dark.
Next, a stamp with a working past for the toiletry bags. One of old Reno's laundries ran its washing drums from overhead reels and leather belts; we liked that leather did the work then and does it again here. So a flywheel and its crossed belt sit in a roundel, WASH above, PRESS below, in the corner where a wash bag wears a stamp best. The stack pairs a machine-iron warm gray with dark espresso.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Then the keychains. Home Means Nevada – the state song has said so since 1933 – and a set of keys is how a pocket says the same thing. A sprig of sagebrush stands over the words, in forest green and golden tan.
Keychains with the sagebrush stamp look just awesome.
Then, for the journals, John Muir's name for the Sierra: the Range of Light. The ridgeline runs solid across the lower corner of the cover, a fan of fine rays rising behind it – a journal being where the light gets written down. One cover in deep navy, one in pale greige – the mountain's blue and its granite.
And finally, the one we liked the most. The Truckee is a terminal river – it leaves Tahoe and never finds an ocean; everything it carries, the desert keeps. That is precisely a catchall tray's job description. So we drew the river's bends running to Pyramid Lake, riffles and pyramid rock and all, and pressed it into the tray's golden tan base at generous size.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.