Off-Topic /
Let's talk about shoes [296]
And now let's talk about shoemakers - here's a little something for Alien.
I never told you Alien, did I, that one of my grandfathers was a 'master shoe and bootmaker' and indeed descended from a long, long line of same, going right back to Norman times ie. 12th century. It seems to have been a virtually unbroken line of shoemakers because the family history shows a 'cordwainer' in every generation. My grandad and his older brother were both apprenticed to their own father who had a large workshop in a place with the wonderfully Dickensian name of Gooseberry Lane. His ancestors used to refer to themself as 'cordwainers' as the first family member to come to Ireland had been a member of The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers. You know how these crafts were strictly regulated by the Guilds back then and only the cordwainer was allowed to work with Cordova leather from Spain and make shoes from new leather. A cobbler on the other hand literally 'cobbled' shoes together from scraps of old leather.
Anyway Grandad went into the British Army but when he came out he still had his set of tools and he had to earn a living so he went back to shoemaking and eventually he had a very large workshop employing twelve shoemakers plus a couple of apprentices. The workshop initially only dealt in custom made shoes but most of the customers were Anglo-Irish gentry and as they faded away Grandad opened a retail shop and began to produce shoes in different sizes that could be bought 'off the peg'. He still did the custom ones to order though. The retail unit also sold leather goods like belts, wallets, bags etc. all handmade.
Grandad made all my mother's shoes (she was an only child) when she was young. When she was a baby he made them from kid leather (goatskin) because it's the softest. He also made dancing shoes for her in kid. Somewhere at the back of a cupboard I have a pair of lasts (shoe forms) from shoes he made for her when she was about two years old :)
He stayed in business until he was seventy at which my point my grandmother really felt he should take it easy and insisted that they finally retire to the seaside. Within a year he was fed up and having lied about his age (he looked much younger than his years) applied for a job managing a shoe factory in the UK. He got the job! But during a trip to England to inspect the factory premises he was in a near-fatal car crash and that put an end to his plans.
Something I remember clearly is that he really understood the anatomy of the foot, and the health of ones' feet. It couldn't be style over substance. The shoe had to look good but not harm your feet in any way. My mother only bought shoes for us children, that he approved of :) We had to have Clarke's shoes because they provided a foot measuring service and had the biggest range of fittings for growing feet. To our fury, we weren't allowed to wear flip-flops or certain kinds of sandals. He absolutely deplored the introduction of cheap shoes in synthetic materials and said that people's feet would be 'destroyed'.
Another thing I remember is that he was very big on caring properly for your shoes. All our shoes had those wood and metal shoe trees. Out of season shoes were thoroughly aired, cleaned and polished and stored in their boxes wrapped in tissue paper. If your shoes got wet they were stuffed with newspaper and left to dry but never near a heat source. I can still recall his shoe polishing kit, kept in special tin container with different compartments and a big black velvet 'cushion' that he used for buffing the shoes to a mirror shine :))
"The term "cordwainer" is an Anglicization of the French word cordonnier, which means shoemaker, introduced into the English language after the Norman invasion in 1066. The word was derived from the city of Cordoba in the south of Spain, a stronghold of the mighty Omeyyad Kalifs until its fall in the 12th century. Moorish Cordoba was celebrated in the early Middle Ages for silversmithing and the production of cordouan leather, called "cordwain" in England. Originally made from the skin of the Musoli goat, then found in Corsica, Sardinia, and elsewhere, this leather was tawed with alum after a method supposedly known only to the Moors. Crusaders brought home much plunder and loot, including the finest leather the English shoemakers had seen. Gradually cordouan, or cordovan leather became the material most in demand for the finest footwear in all of Europe.cordwainers.org/750-years/
So Alien, I hope you enjoyed my little tale :) Have a happy Sunday!
