21517 shoes&pattens9

119

Shoes in art and literaturę

161 Detail of pattens and ‘poulaines’. 15th-century.

the boot leg were separate pieces. However, the materiał from ‘Baynards Castle’, where there were large numbers of separate vamps and ąuarters, contradicts this theory, sińce on this site most of the shoes were virtually complete with little or no evidence of reuse. There remains the possibility that broad leather strips, which have been lost or reused, were sometimes added to heighten ankle-shoes that otherwise appear to be complete {cf. Fig. 23 and discussion, p. 50), but, this aside, the absence of fuli boots remains largely unexplained.

Pattens - wooden or leather overshoes fastened to the foot with leather cross-straps -came fully into fashion in the late 14th century and became virtually a staple element in 15th-century England (see above, pp. 91-101), just as on the Continent. Fifteenth-century illustrations, such as that reproduced here (Fig. 161), or the famous painting by van Eyck celebrating the Arnolfini marriage (now in the National Gallery, London), often show pattens raised from the ground on ‘wedges’ (cf. Fig. 127), a style absent from all the London groups of this period. The pattens in the van Eyck painting, dated 1434, already have long pikes, either because the Low Countries anticipated England in its readoption of this style in the 15th century or, perhaps, because in Europę there was no real break in the popularity of ‘poulaines’ from the end of the 14th century onwards. The latest pattens from the London excavations all have rounded toes, to match the contemporary shoes, but several in the established Museum of London collection may belong to the time of the pike’s return to favour in England in the late 1450s or 1460s. One has an all-leather composite sole (Guildhall Museum 1903, PI. lxxvi.7; cf. Figs. 139-40), but another has a hinged wooden sole which shows an improvement on the plain butted joint found at ‘Baynards Castle’ and Trig Lane (Fig. 133), in that one section of the sole is lapped over the other to make the joint morę watertight (ibid., PI. lxxvi.5).

Status

The issue of status is an intriguing one, and could account in many instances for the seeming dis-crepancy between what is shown in contemporary illustrations and the pattern shown by materiał from archaeological sites. The waterfront dumps in the City of London, despite extensive study, have revealed little about the sources of the rubbish deposited therein. Status is much easier to discuss if the shoes are associated with specific dwellings. Yet contemporary illustrations seem to use different types of footwear to denote differences both in status and role. Frequently on llth/12th-century manuscripts, a king or central figurę is shown wearing shoes decorated with vamp stripes, surrounded by figures wearing undecorated, undyed ankle-shoes. Yet the high proportion of shoes with such decoration in the present collection makes it unlikely that much significance should be attached to the presence of these shoes in the London groups. Manuscripts consistently show the central crowned figurę wearing buttoned shoes whilst other figures wear simple slip-on shoes cut either at or just below the ankle. Given the 14th-century reaction to the presumptuous attire of the middle class, it is safe to assume that the possession of shoes like those in Fig. 48 was an indication of some status. With other shoes and shoe styles it is morę difficult to tell. A pair of undecorated side-laced shoes excavated in the L0m stave church in Norway and dated to the late 12th or early 13th century have been identified by Schia (1977, 148) as the property of a member of the upper class because of their association with spun gold threads. The shoes are very similar to those shown in Figs. 27-28, which, simply on the basis of style and without other association, would not be considered objects of particular status.