The Field Guide Collection × Pacific Grove – a leather stamping study

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

An August study.

Pacific Grove teaches a person to look closely, and it repays the habit. We pressed five small studies of the town into leather – luggage tags, keychains, journals, toiletry bags and a catchall tray – and named the set the Field Guide Collection.

First, the monarchs. Each autumn they finish a migration of some two thousand miles in the pines of this one small town, so we set a flight of them along the luggage tag – faint wingbeats at one end gathering into a single finished monarch at the other – under the words FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLIES. A luggage tag has the same job: it brings the traveler home.

The Follow the Butterflies stamping design from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Two of the tags wear monarch colors, a honeyed russet and a deep pine green. The black tag carries the design in gold foil. It looks genuinely beautiful.

Three leather luggage tags stamped with migrating monarchs, from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Next, the catchall tray. A tide pool is the place where the sea empties its pockets, so the base of the tray became one – an anemone opening at the center, WHAT THE TIDE BROUGHT IN arced around the rim, a shell and a hermit crab waiting low in the water. Keys and coins wash up in the golden tan by evening.

The What the Tide Brought In stamping design from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

An arizona leather catchall tray stamped as a tide pool, from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Then, the keychains. Giant kelp keeps its place in the surf by gripping rock with a holdfast, which is a fair description of a keyring's duty too. A single blade rises from a holdfast wrapped over a stone, with HOLD FAST beneath. The duo comes in deep kelp green and golden tan, and the keychains with the holdfast stamp look just awesome.

The Hold Fast kelp stamping design from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Two leather keychains stamped with kelp holdfasts, from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

For the fourth plate, the journals. The running list of bird species seen around Pacific Grove stands at 291, so we set that number on the cover with a small sparrow perched on the last numeral and AND COUNTING underneath. Number 292 is what the blank pages are for. One journal wears the navy of the bay, the other a pale warm greige of granite sand.

The 291 and Counting bird stamping design from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Two leather journals stamped with 291 and Counting, from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

And finally, the one we liked the most. The Monterey cypress grows straight into the weather and keeps its footing on bare granite, so we bent one across a stamp and set PACIFIC GROVE beneath it. It sits low in the corner of a two-bag toiletry stack, warm granite gray over deep espresso brown, the colors of rock and cypress shadow. Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.

The wind-bent cypress stamping design from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

Two leather toiletry bags stamped with a Monterey cypress, from the Field Guide Collection of Pacific Grove, California.

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'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.