Katie’s Travel Agency × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Katie’s Travel Agency works from West Fargo, North Dakota, under a promise its owner keeps short: “Travel Better. Explore Deeper. Connect Fully.” Katie Black plans destination weddings and honeymoons there, and she runs a literary sideline called Chapter Chasing, which lets fiction lead the way into real places. That second idea stayed with us; a book that opens onto a journey is close kin to a die that opens onto leather.
The agency began at nap time. Katie’s mother suggested the trade when Katie was home with an infant son and wanted work that could stay under the same roof. She took her courses while the boy slept; her first booking paid seventy dollars. Her seal repays that patience – a double turquoise ring with her name in script along the upper arc, and inside, two leaning palms behind a small plane whose route line loops below and curls into something like a heart. A mark this developed, circular and drawn in a single color, is nearly a die maker’s ideal, and we wanted to see whether that fine route line would keep its curl under a press.
The mark, as found
Pressed
Pale sea-blue follows the turquoise of her own mark, and pale gray-sand sets the seal on the kind of warm, quiet ground her pages favor. Black carries the gold foil, and there the looping route reads brightest.
Chapter Chasing
Her seal already holds palms and a plane, so the companion turns to the other half of her practice. An open book, one page lifting free and folding into a paper airplane above the words CHAPTER CHASING. We matched the plane’s climb to the one inside her seal, a small rhyme the two tags would share on a suitcase; whether anyone but us would ever notice it is an open question.
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 Katie’s Travel Agency and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.