Meadow & Pier – a Painesville, Ohio leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of original leather stamping studies.
Volume I-C. A September study.
Painesville sits where the Grand River finishes its run toward Lake Erie, and the town keeps its pleasures close to the water: a fishing pier walks out from the township park, and the meadows newly seeded nearby feed monarchs heading south each fall. We spent September pressing that landscape into leather.
First, the pier. We drew the township park's fishing pier from its official photograph – the straight railed walk, the curved canopy near the far end – and set PAINESVILLE in the sky above the water. A luggage tag likes a long horizon, so the design runs lengthwise.
The black tag carries the design in gold foil – the gold the pier turns at sunset. The navy and golden tan tags take a blind press.
Next, the monarchs. The meadow plots seeded at the township park fuel them on New England aster before the long flight, so we perched one on an aster and titled it SOUTH FOR THE WINTER. The keychains come in golden tan and deep green.
Keychains with the monarch stamp look just awesome.
Then, the journals. The park's naturalists note that some of the meadow's perennials take years to bloom – the roots go down long before anything shows above ground. We drew one whole, roots running deeper than the stem stands tall, over the sentence SOME PLANTS TAKE YEARS TO BLOOM. A journal keeps the same schedule. It comes in deep green and a dusty rose.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
And finally, we braided the meadow itself into a wreath – asters and tickseed sunflowers, bergamot and partridge pea, with grasses threading through – around the words LAKE COUNTY. It sits centered in the golden tan tray and stamps small in the corner of the toiletry bag, 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 these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
P.S.
