Three leather luggage-tag studies for Mill Valley Pottery Studio
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world organizations.
A July study.
One craft speaking to another
Mill Valley Pottery Studio is a working community for classes, events, memberships, instructors, and makers. A leather object made for that community should feel like one craftsperson speaking to another, with the studio's tools and rhythms translated rather than reproduced.
The identity combines a terracotta tile, a stacked four-part grid, and a pale teapot with a large handle and upturned spout. Each study takes a different construction device and gives it a studio task: hands around a bowl, a kiln opening, or shelves of drying work.
The tags could thank instructors, visiting artists, members, workshop leaders, or kiln contributors. Their materials differ from clay, yet pressure, surface, and the maker's hand connect both practices.
Leather and treatment
Caramel and Country Gray receive blind debosses. Black receives warm gold. Broad vessel outlines and open counters preserve the handmade silhouettes at real die scale.
The three concepts
1. Centering the Bowl
Two curved hands guide a bowl at the center of a wheel. Their arcs borrow the handle and spout motion of the identity's teapot, transformed into the most fundamental studio gesture. It reads as making before it reads as brand construction.
2. Kiln Door Glow
One vessel sits inside a rectangular kiln doorway. The tile enclosure becomes the kiln frame, and the pot remains open in negative space. It is a clear picture of transformation through heat and a strong fit for the people who tend that part of studio life.
3. Shelf of Four
Four different vessels dry across two shelves. Their two-by-two spacing comes from the stacked letter grid in the studio identity, with every letter removed. The variation among forms celebrates a shared studio where no two makers need to work alike.
These are independent design studies for appropriate team, partner, collaborator, member, or client occasions. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. Every image is a render used to test the object before cutting a physical die.
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.
If you're Mill Valley Pottery Studio and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.