Marginalia × Leatherius Woodman – a leather collection for readers

From the Practice Log – Shops Volume II.

A September study.

Marginalia – a small leather collection about the marks readers leave. For five hundred years readers have answered their books in the margins: a pointing hand beside the best passage, a little bird drawn where the page left room. We pressed that half of the writing life into leather.

First, we gave the luggage tags the words a story says when it leaves – TO BE CONTINUED, with the corner of the page already mid-turn. Whoever carries this tag is headed into the next installment.

Black-and-white TO BE CONTINUED page-turn stamp artwork from the Marginalia leather collection.

The black tag carries the words in gold; warm red and pale greige, the color of good paper, take a blind deboss.

A black leather luggage tag stamped in gold with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.

A warm-red leather luggage tag blind-debossed with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.

A pale-greige leather luggage tag blind-debossed with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.

Next, the pointing hand. Readers have drawn it in margins for five centuries to mark the thing that matters, and on the fob it points straight down – THIS ONE – at whichever key hangs beneath.

Black-and-white THIS ONE pointing-hand stamp artwork from the Marginalia leather collection.

Looks great when stamped onto the golden tan leather.

A golden-tan leather keychain blind-debossed with the THIS ONE pointing hand from the Marginalia collection.

On the black fob the hand points in gold.

A black leather keychain stamped in gold with the THIS ONE pointing hand from the Marginalia collection.

Then, for the toiletry bags, we ruled a few quiet lines of text and let a small bird lift out of them – OFF THE PAGE, drawn the way a reader once drew birds in a margin. For whoever packs the book before the toothbrush.

Black-and-white OFF THE PAGE bird-and-rules stamp artwork from the Marginalia leather collection.

It comes in navy over chestnut with its pull-up character.

Navy and chestnut leather toiletry bags blind-debossed with OFF THE PAGE from the Marginalia collection.

After that, the catchall tray became a bookmark. A ribbon runs down the base with WHERE I LEFT OFF beside it – whatever you set there at night is where the day picks back up.

Black-and-white WHERE I LEFT OFF bookmark stamp artwork from the Marginalia leather collection.

Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the golden tan leather.

A golden-tan leather catchall tray blind-debossed with WHERE I LEFT OFF from the Marginalia collection.

And finally, the design the collection leans on hardest. Readers once kept commonplace books – notebooks where every passage worth keeping was copied out by hand. We drew the long curled bracket they used to mark those passages and set WORTH KEEPING inside its embrace.

Black-and-white WORTH KEEPING reader's-bracket stamp artwork from the Marginalia leather collection.

It looks genuinely beautiful – in deep wine and in deep green, the colors of old library bindings.

A deep-wine leather journal blind-debossed with WORTH KEEPING from the Marginalia collection.

A deep-green leather journal blind-debossed with WORTH KEEPING from the Marginalia collection.

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.

P.S.

A second black leather luggage-tag rendering stamped in gold with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.

A second warm-red leather luggage-tag rendering blind-debossed with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.

A second pale-greige leather luggage-tag rendering blind-debossed with TO BE CONTINUED from the Marginalia collection.