Small Ceremonies – a leather collection of everyday rituals

Volume I-B

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.

A September study.

Small Ceremonies – five original designs about the rituals an ordinary day is actually made of. Keys jingling at the front door in the morning; pockets emptied into a tray at night. Each ceremony got its own stamp, and each stamp got its own leather.

First, the morning. A dopp kit performs the same small ritual every day of its life, so the stamp says so: BEGIN AGAIN, under a sun just clearing its horizon line. We pressed it into the lower right corner of the golden tan and chestnut stack.

A black-and-white die plate shows BEGIN AGAIN beneath a striped half-sun for the Small Ceremonies leather collection.

Golden tan and chestnut leather dopp kits are blind-stamped with BEGIN AGAIN beneath a rising half-sun.

Next, the keys. We drew one door key mid-jingle – three little sound marks coming off the bow – and set HOME KNOWS THE SOUND underneath. Anyone who has ever been waited for by a dog understands it at a glance.

Looks great when stamped onto the leather.

A black-and-white die plate shows an upright key with three sound arcs above HOME KNOWS THE SOUND.

A caramel leather keychain is blind-stamped with an upright key, three sound arcs and HOME KNOWS THE SOUND.

A forest-green leather keychain is blind-stamped with an upright key, three sound arcs and HOME KNOWS THE SOUND.

Then, the going away. A swallow crosses the tag at full glide above RETURNS EVERY SPRING – the bird that always finds its way back, pressed onto the one object whose whole job is coming back. It runs lengthwise, the way the bird flies.

The true black tag carries the swallow in gold foil; the navy and warm tan tags take a blind deboss.

It looks genuinely beautiful.

A black-and-white die plate shows a swallow in full glide above RETURNS EVERY SPRING.

A black leather luggage tag carries a gold-foil swallow and RETURNS EVERY SPRING stamp.

A blueberry leather luggage tag carries a blind-debossed swallow and RETURNS EVERY SPRING stamp.

A caramel leather luggage tag carries a blind-debossed swallow and RETURNS EVERY SPRING stamp.

Then, the pages. Inside a thin double rule, like a title page: SOME OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, with a small asterisk beneath it that points to no footnote at all. Every journal keeper knows the ratio. We stamped it on deep wine and on true black.

A black-and-white title-page die plate reads SOME OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED inside a thin double-rule frame with an asterisk.

A sangria leather journal is blind-stamped with SOME OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED in a double-rule title-page frame.

A black leather journal is blind-stamped with SOME OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED in a double-rule title-page frame.

And finally, the day's end. Around ALL ACCOUNTED FOR we set the evening census in silhouette – the key, the coin and so on, circling like hours on a clock face. A catchall tray takes this inventory every single night; now the golden tan tray says so.

A black-and-white die plate arranges eight pocket objects in a ring around ALL ACCOUNTED FOR.

An Arizona leather catchall tray is blind-stamped with eight pocket objects around ALL ACCOUNTED FOR.

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.