Lake Pleasant Elementary School × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Lake Pleasant Elementary School is a Peoria, Arizona school that answers online to one shared name, silverhawkpride. Its community line opens with the words "We are Lake Pleasant," and its emblem is a silver hawk that banks hard enough to close its own circle, grinning while it does it. We liked the bird at first sight. School seals tend toward the solemn; this one has wit, and wit is exactly what a stamping die loves.
The mark, as found
A pale silver hawk on a deep berry field, ringed in black, with an intense eye above a toothy grin. The grin is the detail we kept coming back to.
Pressed
The emblem is compact and circular, so it stands upright on a luggage tag, and we pressed it as a trio. Sangria, a deep wine burgundy, is the nearest leather on our shelf to the berry field the hawk flies on, and gray sand carries the pale warm silver of the bird itself; on both, the press is a blind deboss, the mark held in the leather by shadow alone. The third tag is black, and black is the one leather in the line that takes gold foil, so the Silverhawk turns gilded there.
A feather from the Silverhawk
Teachers and staff carry a school day on their backs, and the hawk owes them something for it. Our first companion mark is a single primary flight feather, engraved barb by barb, rising at a diagonal with SILVERHAWK PRIDE in spaced capitals beneath. The whole hawk belongs to the school; a single feather is one person's share of the flying.
On keychains the feather rides as a duo, one fob in sangria and one in gray sand, pressed blind on the face below the rivet.
The toiletry bags take the same mark as a small maker's stamp in the lower corner, on a stack of country gray over dark espresso – the hawk's silver above the near-black of its own outlines. Toiletry bags in our shop always press blind, and on these two leathers the quiet version reads right for a bag that travels.
The journals wear it largest. A wrap journal is among the most honest gifts a school can hand its staff, since half their thinking happens on paper, and here the feather sits generous in the lower right corner. One journal in sangria, one in country gray.
The seal at the end of the day
The second companion mark returns the hawk to the air. A soaring Silverhawk, wings spread to the rim, sits inside a ring that reads WE ARE LAKE PLEASANT across the top and PEORIA ARIZONA across the bottom – the opening words of the school's own line, set in a circle the way the mascot already flies.
It lands on a catchall tray, the square dish where keys and lanyards end up after the last bell. Our tray leather happens to be called arizona, a fact we accepted as a sign. It is a golden tan that photographs on the bright side of honey, and the seal presses blind at the center of the base.
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 Lake Pleasant Elementary School and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.