Highway & Flyway – a Merced leather stamping collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of original leather stamping studies. Volume I-C.
A September study.
Highway & Flyway is a small leather collection for Merced, California, where the road up to Yosemite crosses the path of the sandhill cranes. Two routes, one valley town. We stamped both into leather.
First, a tag for the road itself. Highway 140 leaves the orchard rows and climbs toward the mountains, so we set ON THE WAY over the bend – the one state a luggage tag permanently lives in.
It looks great stamped into the golden tan, and deeper still in the green.
On the black tag the road goes down in gold.
Next, we went back to 1907, the year the Yosemite Valley Railroad first carried travelers from Merced to El Portal. We drew the old route as a herald – the locomotive head on, MERCED TO EL PORTAL around the rim.
Passports the world over come in navy or burgundy, so the covers do too.
On the black keychain the herald is pressed in gold, the way railroad brass ought to be; the caramel one takes a plain deep press.
And finally, the one we liked the most. Every September the sandhill cranes come back to the wetlands south of Merced and wade there until spring – so we drew them standing in the shallows, reflections and all, above the words EVERY SEPTEMBER.
It looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.
The journals carry the cranes in deep green and in pale greige, the color of the birds themselves.
And on the toiletry bag they sit small in the corner, honeyed russet over dark espresso.
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.
