Five Miles Off – a Ferndale leather collection

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

An August study.

Ferndale, California sits five miles off Highway 101, a Victorian village kept bright by dairy money and stubborn care, and it deserves better than a souvenir. So we spent August pressing the Eel River Valley into leather – a small collection we call Five Miles Off, luggage tags to journals.

First, the piece that names the collection. The highway runs straight along the bottom of the die, and one lane peels away toward a gabled roofline. Above the bend, the phrase locals actually use: FIVE MILES OFF THE BEATEN PATH.

Looks great when stamped onto the leather.

The highway turn and Victorian gable stamp design from the Five Miles Off leather collection of Ferndale.

Sangria, golden tan, and forest green leather luggage tags stamped with Five Miles Off the Beaten Path in the Ferndale collection.

Next, Cream City. Butter money built Ferndale's ornate houses, the ones locals call Butterfat Palaces, so the toiletry bags take a creamery seal – a milk can standing between two ferns, CREAM CITY around the ring. It sits low in the corner, the way a maker's mark should.

The creamery milk can seal stamp design from the Five Miles Off leather collection of Ferndale.

Caramel and dark espresso leather toiletry bags stamped with the Cream City seal in the Five Miles Off collection of Ferndale.

Then the keychains, which go back to the town's first name. Ferndale began as Fern Dale, a post office in a glade of six-foot ferns, so the die splits the name and lets one tall frond grow up through the middle of it.

The tall fern between Fern and Dale stamp design from the Five Miles Off leather collection of Ferndale.

Forest green and caramel leather keychains stamped with Fern Dale in the Five Miles Off collection of Ferndale.

The catchall tray takes the county fair, held in Ferndale every year since 1897. We stripped a premium ribbon down to rosette and tails – FIRST PREMIUM – so whatever you empty out of your pockets lands on a ribbon.

The First Premium county fair ribbon stamp design from the Five Miles Off leather collection of Ferndale.

A golden tan leather catchall tray stamped with a First Premium ribbon in the Five Miles Off collection of Ferndale.

And finally, the Queen. Fernbridge has carried the valley across the Eel since 1911, through flood and earthquake, so the journals wear her seven arches with two words beneath: STILL STANDING. In deep wine and warm fog gray, it looks genuinely beautiful.

The seven-arch Fernbridge stamp design from the Five Miles Off leather collection of Ferndale.

Sangria and country gray leather journals stamped with Fernbridge and Still Standing in the Five Miles Off collection of Ferndale.

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 these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.