The Bocaratone Collection – a Boca Raton, Florida leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
A September study. Volume I-D.
Boca Raton, spelled the way a 1916 coast map spells it. The Bocaratone Collection presses the city's first century into leather – luggage tags and journals, a catchall tray and the rest of the line.
First, the design that names the collection. On the 1916 map the stations step down the coast – Delray, Yamato, Bocaratone, Deerfield – so we laid the rail line along the length of the luggage tag and let the old spelling stand tallest at its own stop.
The black tag carries the press in gold. The honeyed russet and pale sea-blue tags take it blind.
Next, we drew the 1927 Town Hall the way the old pen renderings hold it – the arched door under its pediment and the bell waiting in the cupola, with a palm leaning in from either side. It looks genuinely beautiful.
Full size across the golden tan tray, and small in the corner of a pale greige journal.
Then, a pineapple on its shipping crate. In the 1907–08 season the farmers of the Yamato colony shipped ten thousand crates of pineapples from these fields, and a keychain felt like the right place to keep the count. Keychains with the pineapple stamp, in golden tan and deep green, look just awesome.
And finally, WHERE RADAR LEARNED TO FLY. The wartime airfield here ran the country's only airborne radar training school, so we drew a small aircraft casting its sweep over the ground below and closed a ring of words around it. It rides the corner of the toiletry bag, warm gray over dark espresso, and the corner of a navy journal.
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 Boca Raton and you'd like any of these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
P.S.
