Clifton Tree Service × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Clifton Tree Service climbs the big timber around Leavenworth, Washington. "Living amongst the trees is one of the most enjoyable aspects of life in Central Washington," their site says, and they write like people who mean it. Colby McArthur learned the trade on Jonny Clifton's crew and later bought the company he had learned it in. He came up through climbing and technical rescue, and you can hear that lineage in the banner the company works under: "Professional. Safety-Focused. Technically Minded."
Their logo is the rare one drawn from life – a rope-access arborist working high in a tall tree, a Cascade ridgeline behind, the whole scene held inside a tall custom wordmark. We wanted to know how that scene would take to leather.
The mark, as found
Taken from the source vector in the company's dark evergreen ink. A ridgeline runs across the top, and the wordmark opens in the middle to hold the climber at work.
Pressed
The mark is stacked and compact, so it stands upright on the face of a luggage tag – and on a tree crew a tag has more handles than suitcases to live on, a saw case as readily as a duffel. We pressed the full logo, climber and all, blind, on a deep pine green that answers the evergreen of the ink and on a warm caramel tan the color of working rope. A third tag in pale sand picks up the quiet stone tone their site sets the mark against. We did weigh a black tag with gold foil for this family and let it go; this mark earns its living in bark and weather, and the pressed shadow of a blind deboss sits truer on it than anything bright.
Tied in
Before anyone leaves the ground, a climber ties into the rope with a figure eight follow through, and a partner looks the knot over. Of everything we read about this company, that habit felt like the thing the whole crew actually shares, whether the day puts a person on a rope or behind a chipper. So the companion badge is built around the knot. A twisted-rope ring carries the company name and its town. At the center the figure eight sits with its crossings drawn plain, and beneath it stand two words: TIED IN.
On keychains the badge goes where the trucks go. We pressed it on two fobs, deep pine green and warm caramel, the same leathers that carry the logo tags.
For the long days
Tree work has its travel too – a training week, the odd far job with an early motel morning. The toiletry kit takes the same badge small, in the lower right corner where a maker signs, pressed blind into both bags of a warm caramel stack over chestnut brown. A maker's mark should whisper, and at this scale it does.
The estimate book
By his own telling, Colby built this company twice – once on the rope and once in the systems that let a crew grow around him. A wrap journal is where that second build lives: estimates walked off on a driveway, and the plan for tomorrow written down tonight. We pressed the badge generously in the corner of two journals, one in deep espresso brown like wet bark and one in pale sand.
Home ground
The second design is for the end of the day. A catchall tray takes what the pockets held, carabiners and truck keys, the small hardware of a careful trade, and we wanted the tray to say where all that gear does its work. So we drew a survey medallion. One conifer stands on a summit knoll while contour lines spread outward the way ground actually falls away from a high point, and the rim carries the towns they serve, Leavenworth through Wenatchee.
It presses generous and deep into the tray's golden tan. Where the keys land each evening, the leather now shows the ground they worked to get home from.
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're Clifton Tree Service and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.