EASTERNMOST, Volume II – a Lubec, Maine leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies, this time a collection of original designs.
A September study. Volume II.
EASTERNMOST is a small leather collection for Lubec, Maine – the town that stands farther east than any other in the contiguous United States. Six designs, each drawn from something the town can vouch for, pressed into leather from luggage tags to a catchall tray.
First, the mark that names the collection. We drew a compass rose and let the east ray have its way – it breaks the ring and runs on until it reaches the rising sun, because from here that direction is settled.
The black tag carries the compass in gold – first light on dark water.
Navy and pale sea-blue take the blind press – the channel, and the morning water.
Next, the keychains. The striped light at West Quoddy Head has stood since 1858 and wears eight red bands and seven white – and a stamp finally gives the candy stripes what they always wanted, pure black and white.
On warm red the fob borrows the tower's own paint. Keychains with the striped light look just awesome.
The black fob takes the tower in gold, and for once the light is lit.
Then, the passport covers. From this waterfront the next country sits in plain view, so we wrote NEXT DOOR IS ANOTHER COUNTRY over the one span that crosses the Narrows to Campobello – a passport here earns its keep two minutes from downtown.
Navy for the channel; warm gray for the fog that walks it.
Then we walked the shore back a hundred years. Lubec smoked herring for the better part of a century, and one smokehouse still stands on its pilings over the water. We drew it face on – shingled gable on tall timber legs – and pressed it into the corner of both bags, weathered gray over deep espresso brown: shingle over tarred timber.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
For the catchall tray, Hamilton Cove – the Lubec shore where cobbles pile under a fractured headland and the spruce walks down to meet them. We set the cove at generous size on the golden tan tray, two sandpipers working the stones. It looks genuinely beautiful.
And finally, the one we liked the most. The tide here rises and falls as much as twenty-five feet, and it keeps its word twice a day. We stood a rank of old pilings under THE TIDE COMES BACK, each post wearing the same white high-water ring – the most reliable encouragement we know, and a fair thing to press on a journal.
On pale sea-blue the water is in; on pale greige the flats are out.
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 anything here made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
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