Somebody Kept This – a leather collection about the keeping of ordinary things
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies. This one is Volume I-C.
A September study.
Museums begin with ordinary things somebody refused to throw away. We stamped that habit of keeping into leather and called the collection Somebody Kept This.
First, the luggage tags. We ruled a wide museum object label that certifies the bag as an EVERYDAY OBJECT, STILL IN USE – with an open SINCE line for whatever year the owner counts from. It runs lengthwise along the tag.
The black tag carries the words in gold, the way an old ledger spine does. Deep wine and deep green take a blind press.
Next, the journals, because keeping starts when somebody writes a small thing down. Under a dip-pen nib, the cover's corner says WHAT IS WRITTEN IS KEPT.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather – deep wine like a ledger binding, and pale warm greige like the paper inside.
Then we drew an archivist's tied string tag for the keychains. DO NOT DISCARD is the mark that keeps a box in the collection – here it guards the one object nobody can afford to lose.
Then the catchall tray, which receives the contents of a pocket every evening the way a museum receives a bequest. We labeled it accordingly – NEW ACQUISITIONS, RECEIVED DAILY.
And finally, the toiletry bags. PERSONAL EFFECTS is the old inventory term for the small things that travel with a person, so we set it in a ruled label on the warm tan bag that rides above the deep brown one.
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.