shoes&pattens0

100

Shoes and Patłens

an identical all-over floral pattem. The motif itself, consisting of four larger petals between pairs of smaller petals, was apparently madę with a single punch stamped at random, for except at the edges the impressions are not in neat rows but some-times overlap. The third stamped fragment (Fig. 137a) has a geometrie design, evidently madę up of wavy-edged sąuares, but it is too wom and dis-torted to allow the exact form of the punch to be reconstructed.

The most common means of decoration was by stitching, but sińce few of the threads have sur-vived it is not certain how the seams would have looked originally. It is possible that a simple running-stitch was used but morę probable that it was a type of back-stitching (Fig. 138), for this would have produced a continuous rather than an intermittent linę. The stitch-holes are rarely cir-

138 Back-stitching, the stitch probably used on at least some patten-straps. Only one thread is needed. The perforations, as on many straps (cf. Fig. 137), are obliąue and rectangular rather than circular, so that the thread is pulled from the top corner of one to the bottom corner of the next.

cular; normally they are slanting, rectangular slits, so that the thread would not have lain in a straight linę but would have been pulled tight at an angle from the top corner of one to the bottom corner of the next - a form of semi-omamental seam com-monly used today by hamess-makers and saddlers (Salamon 1986, 273-4 and Fig. 9.64). Various simple pattems were devised to fit into the awk-ward shape of the straps: vertical or horizontal lines (Figs. 128-30), either singly or in rows and perhaps once highlighted by threads of contrasting colours, crosses (Fig. 137b) and lozenges or leaves within arcaded niches (Figs. 137c-d). Morę complicated series of stitch-holes (Figs. 137e-f) may be the remnant of very elaborate designs, now incapable of reconstruction.

139 Leather patten (late 13th-century). The sole has six main layers with an additional segment, making a seventh, at the heel. Deep impressions mark the original position of the thread and show how tightly it was pulled. Scalę 1:3.