The Crooked Creek Collection – leather stamps from Bay Shore, New York

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.

A August study.

This is the Crooked Creek Collection – five leather stamps rooted in Bay Shore, New York, where the creek winds down to the widest part of the Great South Bay. Luggage tags and journals are here, with a catchall tray and a few smaller things beside them.

First, the name. Before Bay Shore was Bay Shore, the place was Penataquit – the crooked creek – so we wrote CROOKED CREEK and let the creek wander between the words, widening as it finds the bay.

The Crooked Creek stamp design from the Crooked Creek leather collection of Bay Shore, New York.

Keychains with the crooked creek stamp look just awesome – one in pale sea-blue, one in golden tan.

Pale sea-blue and golden tan leather keychains stamped Crooked Creek, from the Crooked Creek Collection of Bay Shore, New York.

Next, the crossing. Ferries have run from Bay Shore to Fire Island since 1862, so we made the luggage tag what a luggage tag secretly is – a ticket. GOOD FOR ONE CROSSING, it says, with the ferry mid-channel between the lines.

The ferry-ticket stamp design from the Crooked Creek leather collection of Bay Shore, New York.

Two tags run navy and pale sea-blue. The black tag carries the ticket in gold.

Black, navy and pale sea-blue leather luggage tags stamped as Great South Bay ferry tickets, from the Crooked Creek Collection of Bay Shore, New York.

Then the bay's own signature. A hard clam grows one ring at a time, so we perched a tiny ferry on the crown of the shell – and the growth rings become its wake.

The bay-clam stamp design from the Crooked Creek leather collection of Bay Shore, New York.

It sits small in the lower corner of the toiletry bags, navy over chestnut. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.

Navy and chestnut leather toiletry bags stamped with a Great South Bay clam and ferry, from the Crooked Creek Collection of Bay Shore, New York.

Bay Shore sits on the widest part of the Great South Bay, so the catchall tray took a chart. The two shores are pressed into the leather and the bay stays open golden tan between them, with the ferry's dotted course making the crossing – THE WIDEST PART OF THE BAY runs beneath.

The Widest Part of the Bay stamp design from the Crooked Creek leather collection of Bay Shore, New York.

It looks genuinely beautiful.

A golden tan leather catchall tray stamped with a ferry chart of Great South Bay, from the Crooked Creek Collection of Bay Shore, New York.

And finally, the journals. In 1915 the town made silent pictures, and silent pictures spoke through title cards – so each journal's corner carries a card of its own, reading SCENE ONE. A journal is where the story starts.

The Scene One silent-film stamp design from the Crooked Creek leather collection of Bay Shore, New York.

One journal in true black, one in warm gray – on the black one the stamp reads as a quiet shadow relief.

Black and warm gray leather journals stamped Scene One, from the Crooked Creek Collection of Bay Shore, New York.

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 in Bay Shore and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.