One Afternoon Tutorials--Shoes

Since I have not attempted to gather shoe construction projects for my collection of "one afternoon tutorials," I figured that I would do that today.  

Now I have, in the past, posted links to tutorials for shoe ornaments (such as rosettes) or shoe modifications (such as shoe dyeing).  But those are different from making, from start to finish, a pair of wearable, at least plausibly period shoes in a single afternoon.

There's a reason for that.  Shoes have to be more than pretty; they also need to protect the feet and be reasonably comfortable to wear.  That means that most shoes are made from leather or similarly tough materials, not fabric alone.  The toughness of leather makes it physically challenging to sew, so making shoes from scratch usually takes much longer than a single afternoon.

That being said, there are historical shoe projects that can be single-afternoon tasks.  Two of the three tutorials here are for prehistoric shoes, and involve nothing more complex or strenuous than cutting and lacing pieces of leather to fit the feet.  

• "Net-Top" Shoes.  This tutorial comes courtesy of Heather Rose Jones.  The historical examples of this style that Heather gives are associated with "barbarian" cultures of the late Roman Empire.  
• "Iron Age" Shoes.  The designer of this tutorial refers to them as "Iron Age/Viking," but these designs are not Viking.  Like the "net tops" above they require cutting a single piece of leather in a manner that can simply be laced to the foot; the result resembles traditional Irish dance shoes more than anything else.  This particular design may not be historical, but lace-on shoes are documentable for early periods in Scandinavia and probably for Ireland and Scotland as well, and the result is not offensively anachronistic for other prehistoric cultures.
• Regency era dance slippers. This tutorial describes how to sew Regency dance slippers by sewing machine; they have fabric uppers and light (synthetic) leather soles. [NOTE:  This tutorial is old (2010) and the internal links in it no longer work.]  These slippers are meant for wear indoors. [SECOND NOTE:  The recommended pattern mentioned in the tutorial, Butterick B5233, is still being sold but the current version does not include the shoe pattern featured in this tutorial.]

I have been looking for sandal tutorials but have not found anything that I think would, or even might, be a one-afternoon project.  If I find anything else of interest, I will share it.

Queen Victoria's Shoes and Petticoat

Recently, I posted a YouTube video from the Historic Royal Palaces channel about an Elsa Schiaparelli gown made for  Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester. According to their  YouTube channel page, "Historic Royal Palaces is an independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle."

Late last week, I found two other videos on the same channel  about garments that had likely belonged to Queen Victoria. One of those two videos is about a pair of formal shoe boots in a pale  blue silk. The other was about a fine cotton petticoat. Both  garments are from the 1830s.  

The shoe video discusses conservation techniques used to  preserve the condition of the shoes and why they were chosen, while the petticoat video went into some detail about the petticoat's construction, including the fineness of the cotton lawn employed and the tiny waist gathers that using such a fine fabric made possible.

I have embedded both videos here. I think that these items are interesting to lovers of historical costume in general, but these two are of particular value to those interested in Western costume of the 1830s. 

Saalberg Shoe, Redux

A few months ago, I wrote a short post about a Roman leather shoe featured at the Saalburg Museum with a striking, openwork design. 

Today, through Instagram, I found the webpage of a leatherworker who has made a striking recreation of that shoe in red and yellow. Go and see it!  It's marvelous.

Style is Eternal

Today I found an article on the blog My Modern Met featuring an article about an ancient Roman shoe that is on display at the Saalburg, a museum and archaeological park located at the Saalburg Pass in the Taunus Mountains, near the site of an ancient fort built by the Romans.

The shoe itself is a delight, full of lacey punchwork.  It ties on across the top of the foot, near the point where the foot would join the leg, and has a large round opening on the top of the instep.  The photograph featured with the article was originally posted by u/Mictlantecuhtli on Reddit. The article suggests that its thick sole and fancy design indicate that it was a shoe made to be worn outside the home by a woman.  I wonder what the original color of the shoe was.

Enjoy the picture while I get back on track with my current costuming projects!

Early Period Links

I'm still not ready to return to regular costume blogging, but over the past day I've found a number of fascinating Early Period links that I'd like to bring to the attention of my readers.  Most of these involve serious reproduction projects.

First of all, textile geeks and Early Period costuming buffs will want to check out Carolyn Priest-Dorman's latest post (just a day after her re-posted Viking double weave article) about her project to attempt to replicate textile specimen Jorvik 1307.  She started by spinning warp and weft yarns of  thicknesses and wool types to match the original.  I'm always humbled when I read about people taking clothing recreations to this level.

Over at The Reverend's Big Blog of Leather, I found an article by the eponymous Wayne Robinson describing how he made a pair of 6th-7th century CE Anglo-Saxon shoes he made, based on one of the Sutton Hoo finds.  Recent posts by "the Reverend" that are also shoe-related include this short post, with large, clear color pictures, about the world's oldest shoe, and this post and this post about late 16th century shoe horns.

From Irish Archaeology's website comes this recent article about an Iron Age body found in County Offaly wearing a very modern-looking leather-and-metal armband. Known as Old Croghan Man, the find is dated to between 362 BCE and 175 BCE. The article features a beautiful photograph of the armband that deserves a place on one of my Pinterest boards.

Finally, The Greenland Gown Project by Doreen M. Gunkel merits a serious look from students of early and medieval costume. She is in the process of making a replica of one of the 13th century Norse gowns discovered at Herjolfsnaes in Greenland.  She is starting by researching and searching for an appropriate breed of sheep from which to obtain suitable wool fleece to spin into yarn to use to weave fabric for the gown. Ms. Gunkel asks interested readers to register, but registration is free and gets you e-mail updates as she writes about new developments in the project. 

Happy reading!

Arnegunde's Shoes

As usual, I came across interesting information while I was looking for something entirely different. The interesting information that I'd like to tell you about today is the blog of the Shoe Museum in Lausanne, France; it can be found here. (The blog has links that will let you read it in German or English, instead of the original French; the above link is to the English version.) 

On the Museum's blog, I found an article about a 2011 reconstruction of the shoes of a Merovingian-era French queen, Arnegunde (spellings of her name vary), who is believed to have died in the late 6th century C.E. Arnegunde was buried in a stone sarcophagus in the Basilica of Saint Denis, north of Paris. Arnegunde's remains were re-discovered about 50 years ago, and have recently gained some media attention as scholars re-analyze and update the standard reconstruction of her costume.  One of my favorite bloggers, Suvia, provides a little biography of Arnegunde here, along with a discussion of her own reconstruction of the clothes in which Arnegunde was buried. 

It is also known that Arnegunde's stockings were cross-gartered with leather straps, largely because the straps were ornamented with fancy silver strap ends that have survived. But little had been published, so far as I am aware, specifically about Arnegunde's shoes--until the Museum in Lausanne began intense research of the shoe remains.

The Shoe Museum (or the Musée de la Chaussure, to give it its correct French name) has written here about the research and analysis it has conducted of the remains of Arnegunde's shoes and their reconstruction. Suvia discusses the shoe reconstruction, and includes an image of the Shoe Museum's summary of the reconstruction, on her blog here.  For interested readers who have no knowledge of French, I have used my combined knowledge of French and of costume (and the Internet to look up French words I wasn't sure about) to translate the Shoe Museum's summary as follows:

The little silver buckles and back plates, with their strap ends, fasten calfskin straps at the knee. The lower extremities are gartered, and the garters are believed to pass over and under the shoes but are not fastened to the shoes. They are held in place with another set of small buckles and back plates, also in silver. Large silver strap ends decorated with zoomorphic motifs are suspended from the garters at the calves. This reconstruction confirms what Michel Fleury and Albert France-Lanord have suggested, that the difference being that the big silver strap ends with zoomorphic decoration do not correspond to the ends of straps that were part of the mantle, but were suspended from the upper part of the garter, and had a strictly decorative function.

In other words, Arnegunde's shoes did not have integral straps over the instep (like Mary Janes, or modern Chinese cloth shoes of the type I used for my reconstruction long ago).  Instead, the leg garters passed under the sole of the foot and over the instep, and were kept from sliding off of the foot by a separate small buckle fastened at the side of the foot. I can't quite figure out, either from the Shoe Museum's drawing or their written description, whether the separate small buckle were affixed to a separate small strap or whether they were part of the garter somehow, but I suspect there had to be a different strap in play, because there is a significant difference in size between the small buckle and the garter strap-ends.

This reconstruction will affect my planned rebuild of the leather garters for my Arnegunde outfit (which is many years old, was made with non-period materials, and should also be redone--but that's a topic for another day).  It makes a difference to how I proceed if the straps go under the bottom of the shoes and not simply around the calves, as I did with my original pair.  More on how I address the rebuild once I start seriously thinking about that project again.

To Blog a Chopine

Chopines (photograph ©Francis Classe, reproduced by permission)

In the course of my week's activities on the Internet, I found a fascinating blog. It's called Chopine, Zoccolo, and Other Raised and High Heel Construction, and it's dedicated to discussing the construction of shoes from different historical periods.  As the title implies, the author, Francis Classe, primarily makes and writes about the making of high-heeled and platform shoes, one type of which is the chopine, the striking platform-soled shoe favored by the fashionable women of Renaissance Italy. 

Mr. Classe goes much farther than blogging about historical shoes and shoe construction.  A key feature of his site is a number of detailed tutorials, which he refers to as "Project Lessons."  Each Project Lesson shows a pair of shoes Mr. Classe has made, and explains exactly how he achieved his final product, illustrating the explanation with many clear photographs.  The site also contains a substantial body of illustrations and other reference material with regard to shoes and shoe construction.  A picture of a pair of chopines made by Mr. Classe that is the subject of one of the "Project Lessons" appears to the right.

Most costumers (myself included) lack the nerve to develop the skills necessary to make period-appropriate shoes for their historical costumes. Mr. Classe's blog is a fantastic resource for anyone seeking to take interest in historical footwear to the next level, and I heartily recommend it.

Oldest Surviving Shoe?

Someone on one of the costume-related mailing lists I frequent passed along this link to a BBC article about a recent archaeological find in Armenia. (Thanks go to Melisende Fitzwalter from the Yahoo Authentic SCA list.)

The find is of a complete, and relatively sound, leather shoe. It is estimated to be about 5,500 years old. It is formed from a single, shaped piece of leather, and stitched closed down the middle of the instep. The article contains a very good picture of the find, which I commend to my readers' attention.

Interestingly, it would have fit me. The shoe is estimated to be a European size 38, which corresponds to UK size 5 or a woman's size 7 in the U.S., and that is the size I wear. Since there was no body associated with the find, there are no clues as to whether this particular shoe was worn by a man or a woman, or whether the grass with which it was stuffed was worn with the shoe or would have been removed for wearing. 

It it sobering to realize that this ancient shoe would have fit right in with the types of shoes worn in Europe in the Middle Ages, approximately 4,500 years later, and would not be that conspicuous today.

EDIT:   The amazing pearl has located the scholarly article describing this find, and thoughtfully provided a link to same on her blog. The article may be found here. Thanks, pearl!

SECOND EDIT:  The abstract from the scholarly article indicates that the shoe is a European size 37, not 38.  That makes it a bit small for me. :-)

THIRD EDIT:  The scholarly article points out that this shoe is the oldest found in Eurasia, but that older shoes have been discovered in Missouri.  Thus, I have reinstated the question mark in the title to this post.

An Interesting Website On A Hard-to-Research Topic

I recently found this site on the subject of raised-heel and platform shoes in the 15th through 17th centuries CE in Europe, with special attention paid to 16th century Italy. It includes a nice selection of illustrations (from period artwork)  as well as documentation and recommendations about how to build your own shoes.  If Italian Renaissance is your period, it's very worthwhile.  I found this courtesy of the Italian Showcase; it's the page of Francis Classe who, with Sarah Lorraine, has a costume that is currently being featured on the page.