Heart & Awl – a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
Coeur d'Alene is the city by the lake; downtown ends where the water begins. We spent August turning that geography into Heart & Awl, a collection of five original stamps for leather, carried across five goods from luggage tags down to a catchall tray.
First, the lake. Lake Coeur d'Alene stands upright on the luggage tag in its true map shape, every branching arm of shoreline intact, under the words CITY BY THE LAKE; a small white star at the north tip marks where downtown meets the water. The trio runs navy and pale sea-blue for the water, with a warm caramel tan for the dock it ties up to.
Next, the collection's namesake. French traders called this place Cœur d'Alène, heart of an awl, their tribute to the sharpest bargainers they had ever met – and an awl happens to be the first tool a leatherworker picks up. So we let the tool draw the name: the heart is a single scribed line, and the awl's point rests exactly where the line closes. The black fob carries it in gold; the chestnut one takes a blind press.
In gold it looks genuinely beautiful.
Then, steam. By 1910 this lake was said to carry more steamboats than any water west of the Mississippi, so a little steamer runs across the corner of the toiletry bags, wake and all, dated to its year. The stack is navy over chestnut – hull color over dock color.
For the tray, huckleberries. A catchall is the bowl a lake day empties into, keys and pocket gravel alike, so we ringed its base with a huckleberry wreath and set NORTH IDAHO at the center – North, as locals will tell you, never Northern. It presses at generous size into the golden tan.
And finally, Tubbs Hill – the wooded rise that stayed wild beside downtown, its ridge a crown of pines, the loop trail drawn as one thin white path through the black of the hill. It sits in the lower corner of the journals, deep green for the pines and warm caramel for the trail dust. A hill with a trail around it deserves a book to write it in.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
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 Heart & Awl belongs in your hands, or you'd like anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.