Shoemaking

Shoemaking is a traditional career/craft, mostly superseded by industrial manufacture of footwear.

Footwear created by individual craftsmen have included boots, sandals, clogs, moccasins, and shoes.

Typically they are made of leather, wood or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper.

Typically a shoemaker uses a last to form the shoe on. Traditionally it has been made of either iron or wood, and can be straight, or used exclusively for left or right shoes.

The profession of shoemaking has had its own stories (Shoemaker's elves ), patron saint (Saint Crispin), and proverbs ("The shoemaker's children are often shoeless").

Some types of ancient and traditionally-made shoes:

• Romans fighting in northern Europe: furs wrapped around feet, and sandals wrapped over them
• Clogs: wooden shoes, often filled with straw to warm the feet
• Mocassins: simple shoes, often without the durability of joined shoes (although different types of leather have different wear characteristics)

The SCA offers some advice about making period shoes.

Current crafters often use used car tire tread as a cheap alternative to creating soles.

See also

• Cobbler

External links

• Historical Footwear
• A Beginner's Addendum to Making Shoes — Addendum to a (non-available) article on how to make shoes
• Simple Shoemaking — Commercial site about shoemaking
• Bootmaker dot com — Various commercial and non-commercial resources about bootmaking