Cannonball Creek – a Golden, Colorado leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
A September study.
Volume I-D.
Golden, Colorado sits where Clear Creek comes out of its canyon and passes between two flat-topped mountains. We spent September pressing that stretch of country into leather – luggage tags and journals, keychains and a catchall tray.
First, the name the creek carried before it was Clear Creek. Early settlers knew it as Cannonball Creek, after the rounded stones of its bed, and we set the old name over the current threading those stones. It looks genuinely beautiful.
The black tag takes the press in gold – in a town named Golden it could hardly be otherwise. The other two tags run golden tan for the dry slopes and deep pine green for the creek banks.
Next, the two flat-topped mountains that hold the town between them. We drew North and South Table Mountain side by side and wrote TABLE FOR TWO beneath – a keychain for the person you share the table with. One fob runs pale sea-blue for the sky over the mesas, the other dark espresso for the table itself.
Then the town's oldest trade. From 1859 Golden provisioned the mining camps up the canyon, so the toiletry bag – the provisions kit a traveler still packs – carries a wagon wheel under that word. The stack is honeyed russet over chestnut, the colors of old barn planks. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
The creek deserves its reputation. Clear Creek through town is whitewater, and every floater learns it inside the first hundred yards – so we put a rider mid-rapid above the words NOT A LAZY RIVER, on a golden tan catchall tray for wherever the keys land after a creek day.
And finally, the one we liked the most. The American dipper is the songbird that walks underwater along the beds of mountain creeks, so we stood it on a round stone beneath the seven stars of the Big Dipper – one dipper in the creek, one in the sky. A journal for whoever watches long enough to notice, in warm gray like the bird's own feathers and in deep pine green.
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 any of these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
P.S.
