The Lakeshore Ledger – Early Jurassic dinosaur tracks in stamped leather – Volume I-A
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of leather stamping studies.
A September study – Volume I-A.
The Lakeshore Ledger – a small leather collection about Early Jurassic dinosaurs and the tracks they left behind. Around two hundred million years ago, soft mud at the edge of a lake recorded everything that crossed it, down to a single passing shower; we pressed those records into leather, from luggage tags to a catchall tray.
First, we set the small runner running again. Grallator – the footprint of a light, fast meat-eater – crosses the tag in four strides with the gaps widening, under the words STILL RUNNING, because a run recorded in stone has technically never ended. We ran it across three leathers, from the golden tan of sunlit sandstone through honeyed russet to a deep lake navy.
Next, the two trackmakers, printed side by side at their true proportion. Eubrontes ran well over a foot long; Grallator would fit in your palm. On the keychain fob the big print and the small one stand together, each under its own name – a grown stride and a short one keeping up. One keychain comes in warm stone gray, the other in mottled chestnut.
Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Then, the swimmers. Where dinosaurs crossed deeper water their claws just grazed the lake bottom, and the mud kept the scratches. So the toiletry bag – a thing that spends its whole life headed toward water – carries three claw strokes under a ripple line, with the honest roster beneath: EARLY JURASSIC SWIM TEAM. One bag in lake navy, one in dark espresso, the color of the lakebed.
Then it rained, and the shower survived. Among the preserved details of that ancient shoreline are actual raindrop impressions – small craters left in the mud by rain that fell two hundred million years ago. We put that scatter of drops on the journal's corner over the words IT RAINED HERE. A journal keeps the weather of its days; this one opens with the oldest weather report we know of. It comes in the pale greige of dried silt and in a rain-deep navy.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
And finally, the one we liked the most – the whole ledger on a single plate. Inside a ruled border, ripple marks give way to two crossing trackways, the big prints and the small, above a floor of cracked mud, with THE LAKESHORE LEDGER set along the base. A catchall tray is a recording surface of its own kind – whatever the day carried gets set down there and read again in the morning.
Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the golden tan.
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.