Pearl Pediatric Dental × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.

An August study.

Pearl Pediatric Dental is a pediatric practice in Melbourne, Florida, run by a married pair of board-certified pediatric dentists – Dr. Morvarid Moini Kihm, "Dr. M&M" to her patients, and Dr. Altan Kihm. Their logo tells you most of what you need to know: an open scallop shell, and where the pearl should be, a small white tooth. "Where Little Teeth Shine Big" is the promise on their homepage, and the practice is tuned to it – first visits kept gentle, nervous children given time.

A mark that treats a baby tooth as a pearl deserved a study in real leather. Here is ours.

The mark, as found

Pearl Pediatric Dental's shell and tooth logo as found

Pressed

The shell told us which leathers to reach for. A pale sea-blue tag carries the ocean light of the open upper shell, and a pale rose tag answers the pink of the lower one. A navy tag completes the family for the blue script that spells the practice's name. Each mark is pressed blind, tone on tone, so the tooth rises out of the leather the way it rises out of the shell.

Where little teeth shine big

For the companion mark we went looking along their own coast and came back with a lighthouse whose lamp is a tooth. We tried the beam sweeping low across the water first, and it read like a storm warning; raised toward the sky, it reads as morning. The banner underneath borrows two words straight from their homepage.

Black-and-white Shine Big lighthouse die art for Pearl Pediatric Dental

On the valet tray it gets the room it wants. The tray comes in a golden tan that behaves like beach sand under the lighthouse – a place by the front desk or on a dresser for keys, retainers cases and the other small cargo of a family's day.

Shine Big lighthouse blind-debossed on an Arizona leather catchall tray

The same lighthouse stands in the corner of a pair of wrap journals, one in navy and one in pale warm greige – deep water and shoreline. These are the grown-up end of the study, the kind of thing a team that spends its days coaxing bravery out of five-year-olds might like to keep for itself.

Shine Big lighthouse blind-debossed on blueberry and gray-sand leather wrap journals

First light

"Bright Smiles Start Here" became a maker's seal: a tooth coming up over calm water like the sun at dawn, ringed by the practice's name and its own line. A circle this dense risks turning to mud at small sizes, so the rays and ripples are cut with more air than the sketch had.

Black-and-white First Light seal die art for Pearl Pediatric Dental

It sits as a small corner mark on a stack of toiletry bags, navy over chestnut, pressed blind where a monogram would normally go.

First Light seal blind-debossed on blueberry and Sicilian brown leather toiletry bags

The little diver

The third design is for the courage part. A small tooth in an old brass diving helmet several sizes too big, bubbles trailing, going in anyway – which is more or less what every first visit asks of a child, and what this practice is unusually good at honoring. No words on this one; the helmet says it.

Black-and-white Little Diver die art for Pearl Pediatric Dental

It rides on a pair of keychain fobs in pale sea-blue and pale rose, the two halves of the shell again, sized for a backpack zipper or a parent's keys.

Little Diver design blind-debossed on pale sea-blue and blush leather keychains

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.