Head of the Inlet – an Anchorage collection in leather
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
Five stamps for Anchorage – a city that ends, on every side, in something wilder than itself. We call the collection Head of the Inlet, and it presses five of those edges into leather.
First, GRID'S END. We let downtown's street grid run off its last block and fray into tide water, with WHERE THE GRID ENDS holding the seam. The trio wears inlet navy and the pale warm greige of the silt flats at low tide. The black tag carries the press in gold – the city's lights, last thing before the water.
Next, SHIP CREEK. Anchorage keeps a live salmon run directly under its downtown streets, so the die puts the roadway overhead as a single black bar and lets one salmon swim beneath it. It sits low in the corner of a stack of navy over chestnut – creek water over river stone.
Then a keychain that had to be called TURNAGAIN. The arm south of town was named by a crew that had to turn back, and a key turns again every day of its life. The duo runs pale sea-blue for the water and deep spruce green for the shore.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
After that, BREAKUP. Spring here is named for the ice letting go, so we fractured the tray's whole floor into floes and set the word in the biggest one – a golden tan dish for everything the day shakes loose.
And finally, the one we liked the most. ALPENGLOW – the low sun caught on the Chugach ridge. The die is black; the leather does the glowing, pale rose for the light and pale warm greige for the snow it lands on. It looks genuinely beautiful.
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.