Saturday, February 17, 2007

Footwear

I decided to work from the bottom up for now. We'll see where this direction takes me.


First stop, the footwear that would have been worn during the early 1500s...


According to Footwearhistory.com the shoes of the High Renaissance were characterised by being more sedate and shaped like a slipper. This is due to the fact that in the 1400s, the poulaine was popular. It was a shoe with a highly exaggerated pointed toe as shown in this example. Rumor has it that some died due to the fact that they could not outrun their assassins with their shoes so long. Regardless, this was apparently what was worn before the period we're trying to recreate, tho I haven't been able to determine if it was worn before the German period specifically.




According to the above quoted site on female footwear though, it's difficult to determine what the female shoe resembled from paintings, it is still fairly reasonable to assume their shoes were more like ballet slippers and that they wore pattens. This site describes the various names pattens would have also gone by during the medieval period. Clog, Clogge, Galache, Galoch, Galosh, Golosh, Galoche, Galegge, Galliochios, Galloche, Gaulish Shoes, Paten, Patyn, Trippe Latin: Calopodla,Calopedes, Callopedium, Crepitum, Crepita Which of these is German? Not quite sure, but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. Needless to say, they were commonly used and should likely be utilized in authentic garb reconstruction. Regardless, to continue, these are all names for a variety of overshoes, made with wood, leather, or cork platform soles, sometimes with bits of metal on the bottoms, intended to protect the shoes from wet, cold, mud and pavement. They remained in use in one form or another until the American Colonial period. Some items seen currently thought of as Pattens may in fact be sandals. More info that also included this picture of pattens.


According to <http://www.nativearth.net/periodpage.html> the following is a representation of a landsknecht shoe...

This may or may not be the case, but I have seen references to squared toes in shoes around this period. The slashed shoes appeared to have been popular whereever puff and slash was worn.

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