Martha Stoumen’s identity is one artist’s collage, across the range.

Martha Stoumen is a lesson in one artist as a house style. A Sonoma native who apprenticed around the world — including a 2012 harvest at COS in Sicily that sparked her love of Nero d’Avola — Martha Stoumen founded her own California label in 2014, built on “a winemaking culture of patience” and Italian varieties grown in California.

Its brand identity is a warm, hand-made collage system. Since the start, the label artwork has been made by one collaborating artist, Carolynn Haydu — a collage and cut-paper artist (and Martha’s former roommate) — so the range reads as a unified illustrative family, expressed through rotating bespoke artworks per cuvée and season. The art extends off the bottle into prints and illustrated seasonal “tasting books,” treated as artwork in its own right.

(Honest notes: the medium is collage and cut paper, not watercolour, and the artist is Carolynn Haydu — though not every label is hers, so she is the primary label artist. As of 2025 the winemaking moved to Healdsburg and the brand joined the Overshine Collective, keeping creative control; that is not a sale. And there’s no official brand hex, so the tones here are an unofficial interpretation.)

Martha Stoumen lives in a rust-and-sage palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Martha Stoumen’s identity is warm, earthy and hand-made — an ink, a rust, a sage, an ochre, and a cream. The palette pairs a warm rust with a sage green — the register of cut paper, botanicals and a patient, earthy ethos. It signals craft and warmth rather than gloss. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a warm rust plus a sage signals a hand-made, earthy brand. Martha Stoumen’s world is a collage of botanical characters. For designers, it is a reminder that a rust with a sage reads as warm and crafted — right for a patient, illustrative label. The takeaways: build a warm, earthy set; add a botanical green; and treat any single hex as unofficial — using ink for small text so the palette stays warm and legible.

The register is a warm serif — earthy, crafted, considered.

Martha Stoumen’s identity carries a warm, crafted, considered spirit — a collage and a slow hand. A warm serif captures the mood: it is characterful and earthy, the register of a hand-made, patient brand. Set in a rust-and-sage palette, the warm serif feels crafted and considered — exactly the personality Martha Stoumen carries. It is warm rather than slick, mirroring a collage label. (Martha Stoumen’s real labels and Carolynn Haydu’s artworks are works we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because they are not ours to use, the honest description is “a warm serif spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the brand: warm, crafted and considered.

Martha Stoumen stands for a house style built on one artist.

Martha Stoumen is a lesson in making one artist the identity. A rust-and-sage palette, a warm serif and one collage artist across the range make a unified illustrative family — warm, crafted, coherent. The artist is the differentiator. The differentiator is a hand-made, single-artist, patient identity.

For designers and brand-builders, Martha Stoumen offers a clear takeaway: one collaborator can be a house style. The lessons: commit to a single artist and credit them (Carolynn Haydu, since 2014); let the artwork rotate by cuvée and season within one voice; and let the art live beyond the bottle (prints, seasonal books). It is also a reminder to stay accurate: the medium is collage (not watercolour), the 2025 Overshine move is a collective (not a sale), and the palette here is an unofficial interpretation. Martha Stoumen made one artist the brand — proof that a single hand can be the difference.

Keep Martha Stoumen’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.