Legend Has It – a Creve Coeur, Missouri leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
Creve Coeur, Missouri took its name from a French phrase for a broken heart, then spent two centuries filling the place with things people love. We pressed five of its stories into leather – the Legend Has It collection.
First, the legend that named the town. Creve Coeur Lake is said to have settled into the shape of a broken heart after a love that went unanswered, so we drew the lake the way a mapmaker would – a heart ruled with fine water lines, a single rower out on it – and set LEGEND HAS IT beneath. It anchors the collection from the base of the golden tan catchall tray, where pockets get emptied at the end of the day.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
Next, the road outside the door. Olive Boulevard began as Olive Street Road, the high dry route between the Missouri and the Mississippi, carrying carts and stagecoaches in both directions. We set BETWEEN TWO RIVERS on the road itself and kept one small stagecoach making its run. The design travels lengthwise down the tags; the trio runs navy and warm tan, with a pale rose tag for the traveler who shops for herself.
Then, out on the water. Creve Coeur Lake hosted rowing in the 1904 Olympic era, so we crossed two oars over a small heart and dated the design 1904. The stamp sits low in the corner of the toiletry bags, navy stacked over deep espresso – the one piece here you hand to a man without a second thought.
Lake School House went up in 1897, a white one-room school under a bell cupola, and was later carried whole to a Creve Coeur park. We drew it front-on for the lower corner of the journals, the bell still up there, waiting on whatever gets written next. One journal comes in deep park green, the other in the pale greige of whitewashed clapboard.
And finally, the one we grinned about the whole time. Locals say the French name CREEV CORE, and that deserves a badge. We set the cracked heart above the pronunciation and cut the whole thing down to keychain size – the smallest way to show you know where you are. One fob runs vivid magenta.
The black fob carries the stamp in gold foil.
They look just awesome on a ring of keys.
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 this made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.