I recently finished up a pair of 16th C. shoes for a good friend of mine. What I had in mind here was a pair that was appropriate to the century, but would also give an acceptable look for an earlier century as well.

A very large portion of shoes from both medieval times and the Renaissance had some kind of treatment on the opening of the shoe, be it some kind of simple reinforcing stitching or a separate binding or strip applied to the opening. As you might imagine, stitching of that kind takes time to be elegant and look decent, so I figured I would give it a shot. This is also a front lace closure, and the lace can be tied either on the top of the throat opening (like modern shoelaces), or placed through the holes as shown and tied on the medial (outside) of the foot. Tying on the outside tends to give it a bit more flair, at least in my opinion. =)

Continue reading 16th C., but flexible… →

A new project – these are rather unusual shoes, and are based on a couple of images from some German painters (Cranach, most notably). First, let me give you finished product (although the picture does not really do them justice) and then go into detail.

Updated: 9/7/20 – it has been 9 years since I made these shoes. I’ve found quite a few more examples, but those only serve to further complicate things. As it should be, a good mystery! But, the indications are that at least in one example, the “black lines” in some of these shoes almost appear to be laces of some kind rather than simple slashes. This makes some sense, as the lines in all of the images are actually quite dark compared to their white contrasting background. Moreover, if they were indeed laces, they could just as easily have been made with white material as with black, which might explain the red and white shoe with no apparent laces, but there does not seem to be any evidence of lacing on that pair.

What was most unusual about these particular shoes was the black “strip” that surrounded the entire shoe. There are a couple of German pictures which shoe this type of “two-toned” shoe, and although my reproductions look similar, I’m not entirely satisfied with the design.

Continue reading 1530 – 1540s German Shoes →