Sweet on Medina -- a Medina, Ohio leather collection
From the Practice Log -- an ongoing series of leather stamping studies. This is Volume II.
An August study.
Sweet on Medina is a leather collection for Medina, Ohio -- five original stamps for the town the bees picked, pressed into everything from luggage tags to leather journals.
First, the swarm. In 1869 a stray swarm of bees crossed Medina, a man followed it, and the town has been in honey ever since. We drew one bee looping its long way to the hive and set FOLLOWED HOME SINCE 1869 beneath the flight path -- on a luggage tag, because following things home is the entire job of luggage. This one is for everyone who carries Medina away in a suitcase and means to bring it back.
Honey gold for the harvest, deep navy for the evening sky a swarm crosses. The black tag carries the flight in gold.
Next, we drew a skeleton key and gave it the gazebo for a bow -- the octagon roof, finial and all, opening onto MEDINA below. The key to town, sized for the ring that already holds your others; a first-apartment gift, or a welcome home.
Deep green for the lawn the gazebo stands on. On the black fob the key goes in gold, the way the square carries its lights in December.
Then the honeycomb, the collection's namesake stamp, in the corner of the toiletry bag. We built a small comb, capped three cells, perched one bee on the rim and wrote SWEET ON MEDINA beneath it. Beeswax has been the town's quiet business for a century and a half, and odds are it is already in the balm inside this bag.
The stack renders golden tan over chestnut -- honey over hive wood. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
After that, the catchall tray. Medina was laid out in 1818 around a public green, New England fashion, and the plan still works -- the markets and the concerts land on the same square they always have. We drew the green from above, walks crossing at the gazebo, and set LAID OUT IN 1818 over the frame and STILL COLLECTING THE TOWN under it. A tray on the hall table keeps the same promise at house scale: whatever scatters by day gathers here by night.
It looks genuinely beautiful pressed into the golden tan.
And finally, the one we liked the most. On Candlelight Walk nights the square is lit one paper bag at a time, so we drew a row of seven luminarias on the journal's corner and lit six. The seventh waits for whoever holds the pen. ONE LIGHT AT A TIME is also exactly how a journal gets filled -- which makes this the one for the graduates and the teachers.
One journal in true black, where the deboss reads like shadow on a December night; one in warm caramel tan, the color of the paper bag itself.
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're in Medina and you'd like any of these made real, or anything here changed -- say hello through our contact page.