The Handstamp Collection, Volume I-C – a leather stamping study of postmarks and tied parcels
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of original leather stamping studies.
Volume I-C. A September study.
Every stamp we press is a handstamp – a mark set by hand, the way a postmaster once set a date into an envelope. The Handstamp Collection is four such marks in leather, about choosing a gift and sending it well.
First, we cut a cancellation mark the way the mail once wore it – a ring reading WORTH THE POSTAGE around a small tilted heart, the wavy killer bars trailing away behind. Some things are worth it; a luggage tag may as well say so. Here it runs in warm tan and in pale sea-blue.
The black tag carries it in gold.
Next, the sentence every good gift says on its own: SAW THIS AND THOUGHT OF YOU, set under a little parcel tied with twine. Pressed on a keychain, it goes on saying it from a pocket for years.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
The same mark rides the corner of the toiletry bags, warm tan over chestnut – a bag this useful gets given more often than it gets bought.
Then, for the catchall tray, a printer's fist pointing straight down at DELIVERED DAILY. Keys and coins and whatever else the pocket carried home – it all gets delivered here each evening.
And finally, the one we liked the most. A bee takes TEN THOUSAND TRIPS to fill ONE JAR – so we drew the jar half full and the dotted line of the long flight home, the bee still at work above the lid. A journal fills the same way, a page at a time. It looks genuinely beautiful in honeyed russet, and again in deep green – the color of the field the trips cross.
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.