The Long Way Home – a Logan Square, Chicago leather collection

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

An August study.

A small leather collection for Logan Square, Chicago, from luggage tags to journals. We took the geometry the neighborhood already walks – the diagonal cutting the grid, the long green loop of the boulevards – and stamped it into leather. We call it The Long Way Home.

First, the diagonal. Milwaukee Avenue was a trail long before the grid arrived, and it still crosses the neighborhood at its own angle – so we drew the grid in fine lines and let a single flower stem take the diagonal, blooming at the square. ON MILWAUKEE, the way locals give directions.

The ON MILWAUKEE black-and-white flower and street-grid stamp design from The Long Way Home leather collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

It looks genuinely beautiful. On the luggage tags it stands in forest green and blush, with black alongside. The black tag carries the gold.

Forest green, blush and black leather luggage tags stamped with ON MILWAUKEE from The Long Way Home collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

The same scene at full size on the catchall tray in golden tan – the bowl by the door where keys land at the end of the walk.

An Arizona leather catchall tray stamped with ON MILWAUKEE from The Long Way Home collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

Next, we tied a bouquet. Five stems cross in the florist's spiral, and the band that binds them reads LOGAN SQUARE.

The HAND TIED black-and-white bouquet stamp design from The Long Way Home leather collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

Pressed small into the corner of the dopp kits – honeyed russet over dark espresso, candle amber over dark wood.

Two leather toiletry bags stamped with the HAND TIED bouquet from The Long Way Home collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

Keychains in blush and forest green – petal and stem. They look great stamped onto the leather.

Blush and forest green leather keychains stamped with HAND TIED from The Long Way Home collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

And finally, the design that named the collection. TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME, circled by one unbroken line that wanders the way the boulevards do – it loops the square once and comes home as a tulip.

The TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME black-and-white stamp design from The Long Way Home leather collection of Logan Square, Chicago.

Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather. The journals run deep wine and pale greige, for whatever gets written down at the end of the long way.

Sangria and gray sand leather journals stamped with TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME from the Logan Square, Chicago collection.

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 in Logan Square and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.