Seneca Valley School District × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Haine Middle School is where Seneca Valley School District, north of Pittsburgh, keeps its fifth and sixth graders – the two years when a child crosses out of elementary school and into everything that comes next. The district motto is “Proud of the Past, Committed to the Future,” and Haine seems to take the second half personally. This spring the school welcomed Dr. Samantha Schmitt as an assistant principal; she said she looked forward to “supporting and uplifting our students” and to “contributing to the success of both Haine and the broader Seneca Valley community.” We liked her at once.
We kept reading, and the school kept being likable. Haine students planted milkweed so monarch caterpillars would have somewhere to land, and pollinator gardens were planned around it. In March, former Paralympians and the Mighty Penguins Sled Hockey team joined students for a day about inclusion and the unifying power of sport. A school that raises butterflies and rolls sled hockey into its gym deserved a study in leather.
The mark, as found
The district roundel is a compact thing, nearly square. Three pale-blue circular rules hold the lettering, SENECA VALLEY arcing above and SCHOOL DISTRICT answering below; inside them a white Pennsylvania carries a torch, with laurel branches at either side.
Pressed
A roundel this detailed is a real test of a small die, and the trio below is how we prove the press can hold it. Pale sea-blue is the nearest our leather comes to Valley blue, and pale greige stands in for the white that does most of the talking in the mark. The black tag carries the gold. Compact marks stand upright on a luggage tag, so this one does.
The monarch and the milkweed
Milkweed is a patient plant. You put it in the ground for a creature that has yet to arrive, and you trust the arrangement – which is, more or less, the daily work of everyone who teaches children this age. Our companion mark for Haine is a monarch alighting on a milkweed umbel, drawn like a plate from an old field guide, with HAINE set small beneath the stem.
On the toiletry bags the monarch sits in the lower right corner, pressed blind into navy leather stacked over deep espresso brown.
The keychain fobs take the district's blue at two depths, pale sea-blue and navy, with the same monarch pressed blind into each face.
A torch, handed on
The torch in the roundel asked for a second life. In our version the flame is a seedling, two young leaves opening where the fire should be, and a hand holds the handle from below, passing it upward. A few milkweed seeds drift off like sparks. Under it all runs the motto, in plain capitals, the way a stamp likes its words.
Pressed at generous size into the golden tan of the catchall tray, it becomes a small daily ceremony – keys and lanyards landing on the motto at the end of a school day.
And on a pair of wrap journals in navy and pale greige, the torch waits in the lower corner of the cover, with room inside for lesson plans, or for the quieter notes that keep a school running.
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 Haine Middle School or Seneca Valley School District and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.