In Good Order – a leather collection from the age of carriage travel
Volume II of the shop studies – an original leather collection, hung here as a small exhibition.
A September study.
What strikes you first about the great horse-drawn vehicles is the shine; what stays with you is the order. Every lamp had its bracket and every tool its slot in the chest, and the beauty was kept up by daily use, one small discipline at a time. In Good Order is a leather collection in praise of those disciplines – five habits of the well-run road.
First, we booked the luggage through. We drew a road coach loaded for distance – a trunk strapped to the roof rail and the leather boot full at the rear, the body slung on its thoroughbraces – and set beneath it the two words a traveler most wanted to hear at the ticket window. BOOKED THROUGH: passage paid all the way to the end of the road.
The black tag carries the design in gold, the way coachwork carried its pin lines on black lacquer. Warm red and warm tan take the blind deboss.
Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the leather.
Next, we lit the lamps. A carriage lamp burned for one reason – to bring the outfit home after dark – and a key ring keeps the same promise. So a coach lamp stands over HOME BY DARK, flame up.
On the black fob the press is gold, and the gold does the lamplight's work. The deep green fob matches the wagons such lamps hung from.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Then, the best-organized kitchen ever to cross open country. We drew the back of a chuck wagon open for business – lid down into a worktable, every shelf loaded – and wrote the cook's whole philosophy beneath: EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE.
It went onto the golden tan tray at generous size, where pockets empty in the same spirit every evening. It looks genuinely beautiful.
Then, a rule from the tool chest. An edge tool earns its keep only while it keeps its edge, so a drawknife rests on its whetstone above KEPT SHARP – a fair standard for a kit that travels with a razor.
We stamped it small in the corner of the kit, warm gray over chestnut – iron over the wood it works.
And finally, the finest hand in the paint shop. The striper pulled every coach line freehand, one steady breath from end to end, so we drew the brush mid-stroke with its line running clean away – PULL A CLEAN LINE, which is also the whole job of a journal.
One journal in deep wine, the color of running gear that wore such lines; one in black, where the unfoiled press reads as a quiet shadow relief.
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 any of these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.