Safe Harbor – an Old Town Alexandria collection in stamped leather
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies. Volume I-B: original designs for a place.
A September study.
Safe Harbor – a small leather collection for Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Four marks drawn from the port town's own record and pressed into leather.
First, we borrowed the compass rose from the 1748 survey of the bay and set a street lantern at its heart – a compass for a town best discovered on foot. OLD TOWN above, ALEXANDRIA below.
On the black tag the rose is pressed in gold foil. The deep green and the deep wine carry it blind.
Next, the keychains. The city museum keeps a wooden fid, a rope worker's tool from the old wharves – so we tied the fob a carrick bend and gave it the rope worker's order, HOLD FAST.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather – once in rope-warm tan, once in river navy.
Then the journals. Alexandria grew by making ground – streets platted on paper, then built outward into the river. A journal fills the same way, page by page, so the cover carries the grid stepping down into the water above the words MADE GROUND.
One in the pale greige of old map paper, one in deep earth brown.
And finally, the one that named the collection. The 1748 map holds the bay between two points of land; we drew that curve as a sheltering arc over an anchor at rest – SAFE HARBOR, for the tray where rings and keys ride out the night.
It looks genuinely beautiful on the golden tan of the tray. The same mark sits small in the corner of the toiletry bag, navy over deep 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.
