Useful & Beautiful, Volume I-B – an Arts and Crafts creed in stamped leather
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of original leather stamping studies.
A September study. Volume I-B.
Useful & Beautiful is a small leather collection built on the old Arts and Crafts creed – keep only what you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. We pressed the creed into a set of working leather goods, half by half.
First, the useful half. We set a honeybee in flight ahead of the words KNOWN TO BE USEFUL, inside a long cartouche with pegged corners – the bag's own testimonial, sworn by the garden's hardest worker. It runs lengthwise on the luggage tags in deep green and warm tan.
The black tag carries the bee and the words in gold.
The same bee works the corner of the toiletry kits, warm tan over chestnut. Looks great when stamped onto the leather.
Next, the beautiful half. We cut a single ginkgo fan, veins running white through the solid leaf, above BELIEVED TO BE BEAUTIFUL – keys pass through a hand a hundred times a day, so the keychain gets the second clause. In pale sea-blue and deep brown.
Then the catchall tray, which completes an old proverb by existing. We stamped A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING at the center of a border within a border, in golden tan – the tray supplies the place.
It looks genuinely beautiful.
And finally, the one we liked the most. We drew an empty pegged frame above MAKE SOMETHING WORTH KEEPING and set it in the corner of the journals – the frame waits on the cover for whatever the pages produce. In deep green and deep wine.
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.