The Postmark Collection × Leatherius Woodman – a Bellevue, Ohio leather study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
An August study.
For Bellevue, Ohio – a town that keeps, among much else, a national museum of postmarks. We took the hint and named a leather collection for it: the Postmark Collection.
First, the cancellation. A letter is postmarked where its journey starts, so we drew a Bellevue hand cancel – double ring, killer bars – and set one word in the slot where the date belongs: HOME. Stamped lengthwise on a luggage tag it does the old job – wherever the bag lands, the mark says where it started.
It looks genuinely beautiful pressed into pale warm greige, the color of an aged envelope. Deep wine red for the weathered brick and dark espresso for old iron complete the trio.
The same cancel rides the lower corner of the toiletry bags – warm tan over chestnut, the colors of a well-traveled parcel.
Next, the crossing. Bellevue began as York Cross Roads, so we crossed two roads inside a ring and lettered the old name around them. It rides the keychain fobs, since every way home still meets at the crossing – warm road tan and the deep green of Firelands fields.
Then, the slate. The one-room school taught penmanship on ruled slates, and a journal is the same object grown up. Inside the slate's wooden frame we ruled the lines and wrote the schoolteacher's oldest command – SHOW YOUR WORK. Pressed blind into true black and warm gray, chalkboard and slate.
And finally, the anvil. A catchall tray is where a pocket's iron lands at day's end – the keys, the odd honest bolt – so the tray got an anvil at the moment of the strike, sparks flying, and a shop sign of its own: ODDS & IRONS. On golden tan the stamp reads like forge light.
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.
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