Jennifer Walker Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Jennifer Walker Travel is one woman's practice, and she styles herself advisor and advocate, in that order. Jennifer Walker, CTIE and VTA, has spent more than a decade planning relaxed, immersive journeys for mature travelers and for people who travel alone, with a marked love of river cruising and small-ship expedition work. What stopped us was her promise to walk beside a traveler “from first idea to homecoming”. Most of the trade sells bookings; she offers company for the whole arc of a journey, and says so plainly. Our own records place her in Washington, Illinois, though we hold that loosely, since her pages keep the town quiet.
The mark would have earned the study on its own. A globe of loose aqua brush strokes rests on a single black curve, and from its crown a tiny black aircraft climbs toward the upper right; beside it her name sits in patient teal small capitals. Brushwork is the hard case for a stamping die. A die knows edge and depth, so every airy stroke has to survive translation into one firm line in leather, and we honestly wondered whether hers would. It does, better than we expected; the gaps between the strokes keep the globe breathing even under pressure.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
We pressed it on a pale sea-blue that meets her aqua brushwork and on a pale gray-sand that echoes the calm neutral ground of her pages. Black carries the gold foil, as our third leather always does.
In step
Her homecoming line asked to be walked, so we walked it. Two trails of footprints cross the composition from edge to edge, each print a rounded sole with a round heel dot behind it, the upper trail a shade smaller and every one of its steps set exactly above a partner in the lower. Two walkers, in step the whole way: the traveler and the guide beside them. Underneath runs one line of plain capitals, FROM FIRST IDEA TO HOMECOMING. We sketched a version with a small globe above the trails and set it aside; the walking says everything the globe would have.
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 Jennifer Walker Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.