Changed Hands × Leatherius Woodman – a Sacramento leather stamping study, Volume II
A Sacramento leather exhibition – Volume II.
An August study.
Sacramento, California, told in five leather stamps. We call this collection CHANGED HANDS – five small histories of things the city passed along, pressed into goods that will change hands in their turn.
First, the old city's own logic. Numbered streets run one way, lettered streets the other, and the advice here is still plain: stay on the grid. We cut the blocks solid, left the streets white, and set a small ring where Tenth crosses J. The black fob carries the stamp in gold.
Next, the freight. The city's shops built an ice cooled railcar in 1870, and by 1894 three quarters of the fruit California sent east was grown in this valley. We set VALLEY GROWN and SENT EVERYWHERE in stencil around a row of ventilation slats, the way a crate end would say it – and on a luggage tag the second line keeps coming true.
Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.
Then, the handoff. Mail once rode ten days from the Missouri to Sacramento; in 1861 the wire reached town, and two days later the riders stood down. Ten tally strokes, then one strung wire. We pressed it into the corner of the journals, where messages still begin by hand.
In 1895 power came down from Folsom on what was then the longest transmission line in the world, and Sacramento answered with a Carnival of Light. We strung a wire between two posts and lit a rosette at its lowest point. FIRST LIGHT sits low in the corner of the kits, honeyed russet over dark espresso – the bag you open first thing in the morning.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
And finally, the one we liked the most. In 1885 a private house and the art collection inside it were given to Sacramento, festival and all, and a family's rooms became the city's. We drew the doorway with both doors folded open, GIVEN TO THE CITY arched above the pediment, and pressed it into the middle of the golden tan tray – where the day's pocketful gets handed over each evening.
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.
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