The Bluegrass Menagerie – a Carlisle, Kentucky leather collection
From the Practice Log, Volume I-C – an ongoing series of stamping studies of original designs.
A September study.
For Carlisle, Kentucky – where the first roads were walked by animals, and where some very unlikely animals live today. Five original designs, pressed into leather.
First, we set a giraffe's head and neck over a Kentucky plank fence and wrote A LONG WAY FROM HOME beneath it. There are giraffes living in the Bluegrass now, and a luggage tag knows the feeling.
The black tag carries the gold.
Next, we hung a two-toed sloth from a branch on the keychain fob, right above the words HOLDS ON. Holding on is the sloth's entire profession; it is also a fair job description for a keychain.
The warm gray leather comes out very nearly sloth-colored.
Then, for the toiletry bags, a capybara chest-deep behind its own waterline, with AT HOME IN THE WATER underneath – the county's most committed bather, stamped small in the corner of the bag that goes to the bath. We pressed it on honeyed russet, which is about as close as leather comes to capybara fur, and on dark espresso.
After that, the journals. A winding trace crossed with buffalo prints, under the words THE ANIMALS MADE THE FIRST ROADS. Around Carlisle that is plain history: the herds cut their paths to the salt springs, and the roads that came later kept the curves. A journal works the same way; the route gets drawn before anybody walks it.
And finally, the one we liked the most. A shallow basin at the center, animal tracks arriving from every direction, and around the rim the words EVERYTHING FINDS ITS WAY HERE. The salt lick was this county's first gathering place; a catchall tray is the same institution, scaled to a hallway table. Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the golden tan leather.
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 any of these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
P.S.
