48423 shoes&pattens6

46

Shoes and Pattens

easily predominates amongst the sampled uppers from the mid 13th century onwards, though occasional examples of sheep/goat were found in all groups. Toggle and latchet thongs with an identifiable grain pattem were found to be calf, contrasting with Goubitz’s suggestion that these were morę likely to be sheep/goat because of the strength and flexibility of that leather (O. Goubitz, pers. comm.) Heel-stiffeners were both calf and sheep/goat, the latter not occurring after the mid 14th century. At least two shoes (Fig. 13, late 12th-century; Fig. 39, mid 14th-century) may have had calfskin uppers and sheep or goatskin heel-stiffeners - an intriguing commentary on a clause in some ordinances of the London Cordwainers’ Company (dated 1303; Mander 1931, 33-4) that expressly forbade shoemakers to mix materials on the same shoe.

One theory that has been advanced for the change in the types of hides used is that the method of tannage had been changed; but Roy Thompson, himself a tanner, believes that tanning remained largely unchanged from the Saxon period to the 16th or 17th centuries, with tanners mainly using oak (though slipping in whatever else they thought they could get away with). The in-creased use of calf may, on the one hand, have

72 Turn-shoe construction without rand. From the mid 12th century onwards the sole was invariably attached with edge/flesh stitches; the upper occasionally had edge/flesh stitches likewise (cf.

Fig. 76), but grain/flesh stitches (as shown here) were morę common. (NB. In this and Figs. 73-4 the seam is drawn ‘opened up’, not as if it were in the process of being sewn; that, of course, would have been done when the shoe was turned inside out.)

73 Turn-shoe construction with rand. The lasting-margin has been sewn with edge/flesh stitches for the sole and grain/flesh for the upper and rand.

been due to stricter control by the leathermakers’ guilds, but, on the other, may have been the result of a decrease in the amount of imported goatskin, or cordwain, from Spain following the expulsion of the Moors. English tanners and shoemakers responded by attempting to duplicate the effect of the imported cordwain with calf hide which they dyed a reddish colour Oune Swann, pers. comm). A further possible explanation may lie in the intro-duction in the late 14th century of organised drives of cattle to the London markęts; this will have ensured a constant supply of cattle hides in the City, whereas previously the London shoemakers would have had to use whatever they could get (Philip Armitage, pers. comm.). The 15th-century materiał in the present collection shows a decrease both in the number of uppers that have been repaired (Table 15) and in the number that have been deliberately cut up for reuse (Table 16), facts that might be attributable to better-quality and morę organised supplies of leather being avail-able to shoemakers and cobblers.

Shoemaking

The tanned hides of goat, deer or calf which had been purchased by the shoemaker would be laid fiat and the shoes planned to ensure the maximum number with the minimum wastage. There is evidence from Sweden that cutting pattems were used to guide the knife through the thickness of the leather (June Swann, pers. comm), although it is possible that a very skilled craftsman could perform the task freehand. Certainly the ąuantity