The Goat Prairie Collection – a Bucktown, Chicago leather stamping study

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

An August study.

The Goat Prairie Collection – five original stamps for Bucktown, Chicago, pressed into leather.

First, the name under the name. Before anyone said Bucktown, Polish settlers grazed goats on this stretch of prairie and called it Goat Prairie – the goats gave the neighborhood its English name. We drew the goat the way a nineteenth-century engraver would, standing in the tall grass with GOAT PRAIRIE arched overhead and BUCKTOWN set below.

Black-and-white Goat Prairie stamp art from the Goat Prairie leather collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

The black tag carries the goat in gold; the other two press blind, in navy and in a honeyed russet the color of Chicago common brick. It looks genuinely beautiful.

Black, navy and honeyed russet leather luggage tags stamped with the Goat Prairie design from the Goat Prairie collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

Next, the toiletry bags. Milwaukee Avenue was a road before Chicago had a grid – the old Northwestern Plank Road, and it still cuts through Bucktown on the diagonal. So the stamp is a surveyor's grid with a road of solid wooden planks driven straight across it.

Black-and-white Plank Road stamp art from the Goat Prairie leather collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

Pressed blind into the corner of the stack, navy over chestnut. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.

Navy and chestnut leather toiletry bags stamped with Plank Road from the Goat Prairie collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

Then, the keychains. Where the diagonal meets the grid, one crossing makes six corners at once – a star built of ordinary streets, with the keys hanging from the middle of it.

Black-and-white Six Corners stamp art from the Goat Prairie leather collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

On the black fob the star presses in gold; the second fob takes a blind press in the deep green of Holstein Park.

Black and forest green leather keychains stamped with Six Corners from the Goat Prairie collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

Bucktown still stands on vaulted sidewalks – hollow rooms hiding under the pavement, lit through small glass prisms set into the walk. A catchall tray is the same architecture in leather, so we drew the section: a brick vault under the sidewalk's row of prism lights, with the key and the ring already inside.

Black-and-white Sidewalk Vault stamp art from the Goat Prairie leather collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

Pressed blind at a generous size into the golden tan of the tray.

A golden tan leather catchall tray stamped with Sidewalk Vault from the Goat Prairie collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

And finally, the one we liked the most. A month with no name and no numbers, every day an empty square, and one Tuesday wearing the only star. A journal exists for exactly this – the good thing that happens, or gets decided, on no occasion at all.

Black-and-white Random Tuesday stamp art from the Goat Prairie leather collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

The duo presses blind, one journal in warm red and one in navy.

Red and navy leather journals stamped with Random Tuesday from the Goat Prairie collection of Bucktown, Chicago.

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

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