The Glass Garden – a Toledo leather stamping collection

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies. Volume I-D.

An August study.

Toledo cuts glass and grows flowers, and this collection presses both into leather. We call it The Glass Garden.

First, the mark the collection is named for. A greenhouse is a garden kept in glass, so we drew a little glasshouse with tulips growing inside the panes, and set it in the corner of a toiletry bag – honeyed russet over chestnut, the colors of a dried bouquet.

It looks genuinely beautiful.

The Glass Garden glasshouse die plate for the Toledo leather collection.

Honeyed russet and chestnut leather toiletry bags stamped with The Glass Garden glasshouse design from Toledo.

Next, we cut a tulip the way this city cuts crystal, all flat facets and hard edges, and wrote TOLEDO beneath it. The pale sea-blue keychain reads like glass in the hand; the deep green one belongs to the garden.

The Glass Garden cut-glass tulip die plate for the Toledo leather collection.

A pale sea-blue leather keychain stamped with the cut-glass Toledo tulip from The Glass Garden collection.

A deep green leather keychain stamped with the cut-glass Toledo tulip from The Glass Garden collection.

Then, for the luggage tags, we set one petal sailing DOWN THE MAUMEE – everything that ever left this city went down the river first. It travels in navy and in pale rose.

The black tag carries the gold.

The Glass Garden Down the Maumee petal-boat die plate for the Toledo leather collection.

A black leather luggage tag with a gold Down the Maumee petal-boat stamp from The Glass Garden collection.

A navy leather luggage tag stamped with the Down the Maumee petal-boat design from The Glass Garden collection.

A pale rose leather luggage tag stamped with the Down the Maumee petal-boat design from The Glass Garden collection.

After that, a catchall tray for the small things a day leaves in your pockets. Down at the Metropark, nearly two hundred glass orbs each hold one object a Toledoan chose as a memory, so we put a single bloom inside a faceted orb and wrote SMALL HISTORIES beneath it, generous on the golden tan.

The Glass Garden Small Histories memory-orb die plate for the Toledo leather collection.

A golden tan leather catchall tray stamped with the Small Histories memory-orb design from The Glass Garden collection.

And finally, the one we liked the most. A journal is where a flower gets pressed and where a day gets kept, so the cover says both at once – a viola flattened as if it spent the summer under the back cover, above the words PRESSED AND KEPT. It comes in pale rose and in deep green.

Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.

The Glass Garden Pressed and Kept viola die plate for the Toledo leather collection.

A pale rose leather journal stamped with the Pressed and Kept viola from The Glass Garden collection.

A deep green leather journal stamped with the Pressed and Kept viola from The Glass Garden collection.

We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this collection 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 any of these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.