The Gillham Loop × Leatherius Woodman – a Kansas City leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
This one is rooted at the Gillham Plaza edge of Midtown Kansas City, where a planted boulevard runs past a restored 1920s cosmetics building and the ground remembers an old cable railway. We turned those few blocks into The Gillham Loop, a small leather collection of five stamps pressed into luggage tags and the rest of a daily kit.
First, the namesake. Kansas City's early cable railway was engineered by Robert Gillham, the man the boulevard is named for, and a cable is one endless line that goes out and comes home. We drew the whole journey as a single stroke, and where the line crosses itself on the way back, a leaf sits in the crossing.
On the luggage tags it runs lengthwise, because the loop is the part of every trip that brings you back. The trio runs from deep parkway green through pale limestone greige to honeyed russet.
Next, the toiletry bags. Hyde Park, a block south, began at natural springs where travelers watered before the long road west, and a morning wash is the same errand at a smaller scale. So the bags carry a spring rising between limestone courses, with BEGIN AT THE SPRING beneath.
Pressed small into the lower corner, stone gray stacked over chestnut. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Then, the keychains. Every good ritual begins with one small change, kept. A key fob passes through your hands a dozen times a day, so we put the reminder where the hands already are – a dropper, with one drop just released, falling toward the O of ONE.
It looks genuinely beautiful pressed blind into caramel and deep green.
After that, the catchall tray. Before the boulevards were planted, the grassland just south of this stretch was where westbound wagons gathered their daily necessities. A tray by the door does the same work at the scale of one hallway, so we lettered it like an apothecary label and pressed it at generous size into golden tan.
And finally, the one we liked the most. The old cosmetics factory on Gillham Plaza was drawn in the late 1920s by Nelle Peters, one of the few women then practicing architecture in Kansas City, and it stood vacant for nearly two decades before restoration brought it back. We put her window on the journal covers – nine panes, one already leafing.
One journal in pale greige, the cream stone of the building; the other in deep espresso, its dark brick. Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.
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 this is your corner of Kansas City and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.