Sapphire Seas Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Sapphire Seas Travel is the Whiteland, Indiana practice of Elaine Pesto, owner and travel advisor. She dates the whole enterprise to a first Caribbean cruise in 2008, the trip she says changed everything, and years of regular travel to Mexico and the tropics followed. By her own count she has since seen thirty-one countries, and she plans journeys by land and by sea across Europe and beyond; the 2024 Paris Olympics sits among the trips she took herself before recommending any road to a client. Her mark earned the study on sight. A circular wave spirals in teal at the left, and two long swashes roll beneath the name like water under a hull, with SAPPHIRE SEAS in high-contrast serif capitals and TRAVEL spaced wide below.
We will admit the spiral gave us pause at the bench. Nested curved strokes set that close can silt up in a deboss and come off the press as a smudged whorl. We opened the spacing a hair in the die drawing and proofed it at tag scale; the water came back, and the wave holds its curl even at the size of a thumbnail.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
Turquoise follows the live teal of her wave, and blueberry sits nearer the deep water in her cruise imagery; the full lockup runs lengthwise on both. Black carries the gold foil, as our third pull always does.
By land and sea
Her practice moves both ways, so the companion does too. One continuous journey line begins as a five-dash road and resolves into three rising waves, curling at last into a tight spiral above BY LAND AND SEA, pressed lengthwise. We debated whether the dashes should shorten as they near the water; the render keeps them even, and we may yet change our minds.
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 Sapphire Seas Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.