True North, Volume II – a Painesville, Ohio leather collection
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of original leather stamping studies.
Volume II. A September study.
True North is a small leather collection rooted in Painesville, Ohio, where the Grand River slips through town and Lake Erie waits two and a half miles north. Four dies, drawn for this place and pressed onto luggage tags and journals, keychains and a golden catchall tray.
First, the compass. The Grand does what every river on this coast does – it runs north to the lake. So we drew a compass and let the river be the needle: it enters the card at S, meanders up through the middle and sharpens into the arrowhead at N. THE RIVER RUNS NORTH, written beneath, is simply the truth.
The black tag carries the compass in gold; the navy and pale greige tags take a blind press.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
Next, market day. Painesville still keeps a farmers market through the summer, with local honey and whatever the gardens allow – so we wove a basket out of ink, flowers over one rim and a loaf under the handle, and set MARKET DAY beneath it. A journal is where the list gets written before the basket fills.
One journal wears market-awning red, the other the basket's own warm tan.
Then, the bees. Wild bergamot grows in the township meadows, and the market sells local honey – somebody is doing the work in between. So we set a honeybee on the bergamot's shaggy crown and gave the flower its better name: BEE BALM.
Keychains with the bee balm stamp look just awesome – one in honey gold, one in deep meadow green.
The same bee presses into the corner of the toiletry bag – golden tan over dark espresso, honey over coffee.
And finally, the one we liked the most. From the pier at Township Park the horizon is perfectly flat, with no far shore anywhere on it – fresh water wearing an ocean's horizon. So we drew the pier's long walk and its canopies against that empty line and named the water what the pier already knows: INLAND SEA. It presses wide across the golden tan tray, where the day's pockets empty out.
Looks absolutely gorgeous when stamped onto the 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 these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.
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