The Flower Press – a botanical printing collection stamped in leather

The Flower Press – a stamping study in garden flowers and botanical printing. Volume I-A.

A September study.

In botanical printing a flower is laid on cloth and struck, and the mark it leaves can never be repeated. A leather stamp works by the same pressure and the same contact, so we carried the garden across, one die at a time.

First, we pressed the dye garden's gold – one lanceleaf coreopsis head, eight notched rays around its seed disc, above the words COREOPSIS GIVES GOLD.

Black-and-white COREOPSIS GIVES GOLD stamp artwork with a notched coreopsis bloom, stem, and leaf pair.

On the deep green luggage tag the bloom sits against its own foliage color, and the golden tan keychain lets the leather supply the gold itself. The black keychain carries the phrase in real gold foil – the stamp doing exactly what the petals do in the dye pot.

A forest-green leather luggage tag blind-stamped with the COREOPSIS GIVES GOLD botanical design.

An Arizona-brown leather keychain blind-stamped with the COREOPSIS GIVES GOLD botanical design.

A black leather keychain gold-stamped with the COREOPSIS GIVES GOLD botanical design.

Next, true indigo – the leaf that is soaked and fermented into blue – drawn as an upright sprig of paired leaflets above INDIGO GIVES BLUE. On the navy luggage tag the motto proves itself under your thumb.

Black-and-white INDIGO GIVES BLUE stamp artwork with one upright sprig of paired indigo leaflets.

The pale warm greige journal stands in for undyed cloth, and the toiletry bags – navy over deep brown, the vat over the table – take the sprig as a small corner mark.

A blueberry leather luggage tag blind-stamped with the INDIGO GIVES BLUE botanical design.

A Gray Sand leather wrap journal blind-stamped with the INDIGO GIVES BLUE botanical design.

Blueberry and dark-espresso leather dopp kits blind-stamped with the INDIGO GIVES BLUE botanical design.

Then Amaryllis belladonna, the naked lady lily, whose trumpets open on a bare stalk after the leaves have withered away. We drew the stalk exactly that bare and set the Latin name beneath it, specimen fashion.

Black-and-white AMARYLLIS BELLADONNA stamp artwork with five trumpet flowers on one bare stalk.

It looks genuinely beautiful on the pale rose tag. The dusty rose journal wears it small, in the corner of the cover.

A blush leather luggage tag blind-stamped with the AMARYLLIS BELLADONNA botanical design.

A Parisian Blossom leather wrap journal blind-stamped with the AMARYLLIS BELLADONNA botanical design.

And finally, the one we liked the most – a mallet caught mid-strike above a coreopsis bloom, its ragged print already spreading beneath. Under everything, one line: ONE OF ONE. Every hammer print is.

Black-and-white ONE OF ONE stamp artwork with a flower hammer, an intact bloom, and a ragged botanical print.

The golden tan tray gives it press-table room. Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.

An Arizona-brown leather catchall tray blind-stamped with the ONE OF ONE flower-hammer design.

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.