Three Tablet Cases and the Colors That Fight
Turquoise and yellow, red and cream, red and blue: a color study I made for a screen
Most people put a tablet in a case to protect it. I wanted to give it a wardrobe. A screen of black glass seemed to ask for color around it, so I made three cases: a turquoise suede one lined in yellow, a red crocodile-embossed one with cream straps, and a smooth red one with a turquoise-blue inside.
Video: “Red English Bridle Leather iPad holder with suede lining,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.
That video is from September 2015. Its description calls the piece the Volt iPad Holder, a hand-stitched English bridle leather case that secures the device to a calf suede-lined bed so it can hang from the neck. The video has no narration, and I can’t tell you which of the three cases in the photographs it shows, so the rest of this post sticks to what the photographs show.
Turquoise and yellow
This is the loudest of the three, and it’s loud on purpose. The outside is turquoise suede, soft and slightly mottled. Turn the case over and a yellow leather pocket sits in the middle of the turquoise like a patch on a jacket, with a yellow tab at each side. Open it and the inside is a clean, bright yellow.
On paper those two colors shouldn’t work together. In a flat sketch they’d look like a swimming pool and a lemon. But suede softens the turquoise and smooth leather sharpens the yellow, so they stop competing and start passing the light back and forth. Opinion: the best color pairings are the ones that ought to fail.
The tablet sits inside on four black corner mounts, one at each corner, and you can see them in the photograph. They hold the device without covering the screen. It’s honest engineering in a case that otherwise behaves like a painting.
Red and cream
The second case is dressed for evening. It’s red leather embossed with a crocodile pattern, and it carries the pattern inside as well as out. A pale cream strap crosses the closed case and passes through two cream tabs. The embossing is a pattern pressed into the leather, not an animal’s hide, and I’d rather say so plainly than let a photograph suggest otherwise.
I like how the cream behaves against the red. It reads as a bone-white line on a red coat, a single pale gesture that organizes the whole surface. Without it the case would be a glossy red tile. With it the case has structure, a sense of being bound.
The embossed scales run in long, narrow rows across the face, and the pattern catches light unevenly as you turn the case. That’s one thing embossing does that a flat color can’t.
Red and blue
The third case is the quiet one. The outside is smooth red leather with a stitched red pocket on one face, a buckle strap on the other, and red tabs at the edges. Open it and the inside is a saturated turquoise blue, and in the edge views you can see that blue peeking out along the tablet like a stripe of sky.
You see red. You open it. You get blue. The same reveal, scaled down to a tablet, that I use in other work: a plain exterior and a private color inside. The red mini case with the brass elephant handle works on the same principle at a different size.
What a case for a screen has to do
A tablet has one big job, and it’s to be looked at. A case has the opposite job: to be there without being looked at. That’s the usual rule, and I broke it on purpose.
My argument was that the screen is already the show. When it’s off, a tablet is a slab of black glass, and a slab of black glass is a hole in a room. Put a colored frame around it and the hole becomes a picture. That’s an opinion, and some people would call it an excuse to use turquoise.
There’s a second argument I find more persuasive. Leather ages, and the device inside it will be replaced in a few years, because that’s what happens to screens. A case can outlive the thing it was built for. Also opinion, but it’s why I’d rather put the effort into the part that lasts.
The straps
Every one of these cases closes with a strap, and every strap is leather you can see. The turquoise case closes with a yellow strap that loops around the edge. The red crocodile case carries a cream one through two tabs. The smooth red case has a red buckle strap, stitched at the ends, with the buckle and tabs in plain view.
I find straps more honest than magnets. A magnet is invisible, and when you open the case you can’t see what held it shut. A strap is visible, and you know what’s keeping the case closed the moment you look at it. That’s a principle I come back to often: the mechanism should be something you can see and understand.
Where they are now
None of these three is in the shop today. A case like this is made to fit a specific device, so anything I made now would be measured to the tablet in your hands. If that appeals to you, write to me through the Bespoke page and tell me what you carry.
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