Second Growth, Volume II – a Stowe leather stamping collection

Second Growth is Volume II of our Stowe leather collections – five original stamps drawn from the working landscape of Stowe, Vermont, the one that fed the town before the ski trails came and then grew back into woods. We pressed them into leather because leather comes back from wear the same honest way.

An August study.

First, the sugarmaker's law: sap runs when nights freeze and days thaw. We hung a bucket on a bare maple and set the moon on one side of the trunk and the sun on the other, so the tree splits the phrase the way the day splits the work – and on this mountain FREEZE BY NIGHT, RUN BY DAY holds for skiers too.

Black-and-white stamp artwork of a tapped maple between moon and sun for the Second Growth leather collection of Stowe, Vermont.

The black tag takes the words in gold, like syrup off the spoon.

A black leather luggage tag stamped in gold with Freeze by Night, Run by Day from the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

Golden-tan arizona reads as the maple itself; forest green is the sugarbush around it.

A golden-tan leather luggage tag blind-stamped with a tapped maple for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

A forest-green leather luggage tag blind-stamped with Freeze by Night, Run by Day for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

Next, THE DEER YARD – Vermont's old name for the sheltered ground where deer pass the winter. Cady Hill closes its far end each winter for exactly this, so we bedded a deer under drooping hemlock and ringed it like a badge.

Black-and-white stamp artwork of a bedded deer under hemlock for the Second Growth leather collection of Stowe, Vermont.

Keychains with the bedded deer look just awesome.

In pale gray sand the deer beds in snow. Dark espresso is the winter wood at dusk, and caramel is the deer's own coat.

A pale gray-sand leather keychain stamped with The Deer Yard for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

A dark-espresso leather keychain stamped with a sheltered deer for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

A caramel leather keychain stamped with The Deer Yard for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

Then we went further back. Merino sheep climbed these hills around 1815, and the uplands wore wool before they wore snow – so a ram stands on the ridge under exactly those words, with the date beneath his feet. It presses into the corner of a wool-gray kit over dark espresso.

Black-and-white stamp artwork of a Merino ram dated 1815 for the Second Growth leather collection of Stowe, Vermont.

Country-gray and dark-espresso leather toiletry bags stamped with Wool Before Snow for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

For the tray, a litany. We stacked the names of Stowe's conserved ground – Wiessner Woods, Long Winter Farm and the rest – over one large word, HELD, and centered the plate on the golden-tan tray. It does for your keys what the town does for its woods.

Black-and-white typographic stamp artwork listing conserved Stowe places for the Second Growth leather collection.

A golden-tan leather catchall tray stamped with conserved Stowe place names for the Second Growth collection.

And finally, the namesake. Cady Hill was crop and pasture before it was forest; the woods standing there now are second growth. We cut a weathered stump sending up one young maple shoot for the corner of the journals – a book of blank pages is second growth of its own.

Black-and-white stamp artwork of a maple shoot rising beside an old tree base for the Second Growth leather collection of Stowe, Vermont.

It looks genuinely beautiful. On deep forest green the shoot rejoins the woods; on warm caramel it stands in old-pasture tan.

A forest-green leather journal stamped with a young maple shoot for the Second Growth collection of Stowe, Vermont.

A caramel leather journal stamped with the Second Growth maple design for the Stowe, Vermont collection.

We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this collection is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.

If Stowe is your town, or the one you keep coming back to, and you'd like any of this made real or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.