Ridge Lift – leather studies of Elmira Heights, New York
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies. Volume I-C.
A September study.
Ridge Lift is a small leather collection rooted in Elmira Heights, New York, and the soaring country around it – a sky that held the first national soaring contest in 1930 and has flown on wind and patience ever since. We pressed that story into luggage tags and journals, keychains and a catchall tray.
First, the bargain that started everything here. Wind meets a hillside and has nowhere to go but up, and a sailplane parked in that rising river of air stays up with it. We drew the wind bending over a long ridge and a glider holding station in the rise, with RIDGE LIFT standing beside the hill.
It runs lengthwise along the luggage tags, in colors taken from a hand-colored postcard of this valley: deep green for the hills, pale sea-blue for the sky. The warm tan is the postcard's own aged paper.
The same ridge sits low in the corner of a chestnut wash bag. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Next, the part visitors never guess: a glider with no engine climbs by turning. It finds a column of rising air and circles inside it, coming back around a little higher each lap. So – CLIMB IN CIRCLES, under a sailplane leaving the top of its spiral.
On a journal the phrase does its second job – anyone who has kept one knows the feeling of arriving at the same page again and being higher anyway. It looks genuinely beautiful in dusty lavender, the postcard's distant hills, and in warm tan.
The keychains carry it in navy and in golden tan – a small climb for a pocket.
And finally, the country itself. Eleven glacial lakes give this region its name, so we cut eleven slender fingers of water above the words ELEVEN LAKES – CARVED BY ICE, and pressed them at generous size into the golden tan tray.
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.
