Mermaid City – a leather collection from Norfolk's waterfront (Volume I-A)
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies. Volume I-A, an independent study.
A September study.
In 1999 Norfolk cast the same mermaid a hundred and thirty times and handed her to its artists, and every one became her own work of art – on parade downtown and out along a waterfront that surrounds the city on almost every side. We took the tradition at its word: five leather stamps, five mermaids of our own, for the Mermaid City.
First, THE SWIMMER. We sent a mermaid swimming the full length of the luggage tag, hair streaming, and set MERMAID CITY riding beneath her – the nickname this town earned fair and square.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather. She swims here on navy and on pale sea-blue; a golden tan tag rounds out the set, the color of pier timber in the sun.
Next, HOME PORT. A mermaid fouls the anchor the way rope usually does – arms around the shank, tail coiled below – and the words say what a keyring is for. The Atlantic Fleet calls this river home, and your keys answer to the same idea.
One presses into navy; the other into warm red, because a ship shows red on her port side.
Then the oldest mermaid emblem there is – the comb and the glass – drawn as a small roundel for the toiletry bag, since she carries her grooming kit in the picture and you carry yours in the bag. It needed no words.
Blind debossed in the lower corner, navy over chestnut, like harbor water over dock timber.
Then one for the journals. Around Norfolk you turn a corner and there stands a mermaid; on the cover she waits in the lower corner instead, up on a mooring post with the chain still looped, NORFOLK beneath her. A journal is the right place for whatever the water made you think of.
Two covers – pale sea-blue and dusty lavender.
And finally, the one we liked the most. CITY ON THE WATER – above the waterline a tall ship under full sail, and beneath her hull a mermaid swimming the same heading. Two halves of the same harbor. The tray is where your keys land when you come home from the water.
It looks genuinely beautiful pressed into the golden tan.
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.
