The Garden Year, Volume I-A – Monroe, Connecticut's garden seasons in stamped leather
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
A September study.
Volume I-A follows the garden year in Monroe, Connecticut – the backyards that open with a sprout pushing through cold soil and close with a cardinal on a bare branch. Five original designs, pressed into leather: The Garden Year.
First, spring. We drew a perennial sprout above the soil line, and under the line, the bulb that waited out the winter – the half of spring nobody gets to see. Beneath it we set EVERYTHING COMES BACK, because in a perennial garden that is simply the truth. A journal is where a gardener holds the year to that promise.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather – once in deep green, once in warm caramel.
Next, October. One red maple leaf, caught mid-fall, and no words at all – a catchall tray already knows what to do with things that drop.
It looks genuinely beautiful on the golden tan.
Then, the green that keeps. We crossed a white pine sprig with a winterberry twig and pressed it small into the bag's corner – the same quiet corner an evergreen holds in a winter yard. Here on a stone-gray bag over dark espresso.
Then the bird every Connecticut yard knows on sight. We perched a cardinal on a bare winterberry branch and gave it the plainest promise in the yard: STAYS ALL WINTER.
The black tag carries it in gold.
It looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather – on winter-pale gray sand, and again on deep evergreen.
And finally, the whole year on one ring. A single branch bends into a circle – buds, then full leaf, then one leaf letting go, then bare wood – around the words YEAR AFTER YEAR. A keychain gets carried through all of it.
Keychains with the year-ring stamp look just awesome too, in golden tan and in navy.
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 anything here made real, or anything changed – say hello through our contact page.
P.S.
