Imagine. It's summer and it's really hot. The lawn is full of bindies, there are biting insects out and about and bees buzzing around in the clover. Luckily, you have thongs and sandals which allow you to walk through the grass without being hurt! Next, imagine it's winter and you live in an area where it snows. It's cold, it's wet and it's slippery but you have boots to keep your feet warm and dry. Or imagine you live in the bush or the jungle. There are lots of little stones and rocks and they are difficult to walk on. Thank goodness for the sneakers which protect your feet. Now, imagine all of these scenarios without shoes!
When I took this wooden cobblers last to show the children, they thought it must be the foot from the bottom of a wooden leg, like pirates wear. They thought the hole in the top would screw into the wooden leg, and the stiff joint in the foot was to help with walking. I hadn't even thought of this interpretation - it shows how differently children think! Although they all wear shoes, children don't spare much thought for them, or for how they are made. Of course they all assume that shoes are made by machines in factories, and today they may well be correct. This is how most shoes are made. In the past though, and in some smaller, more traditional shoe factories, shoes are hand made and this cobblers last or form would probably have been used to make many a shoe in its day!
As far back as 15000 years ago carvings were made showing people wearing crude shoes. They were probably some of the first clothing items made by humans, and were made because they were necessary. Just imagine trying to walk through snow and ice or hot sand dunes with bare feet! At first, people probably made their own crude shoes by tying leather or plaited weeds to, or around the feet (depending on whether they wanted to enclose the foot entirely or not). Yet even thousands of years ago, it seems that professional shoemakers - cobblers - began to evolve. Oetzi, the famous 5300 year old Ice Man wore shoes. He was wearing them when he died and they were still intact when he was discovered in 1991. Analysis of the shoes shows that they were very complex and in 2004 a Czech academic, Petr Hlavacek, recreated them, using the same types of materials and methods they would have been made with. He discovered that they were actually very comfortable and very successful at protecting the foot from cold and snow. So successful in fact, that at one stage there were plans to remake them and sell them to hikers! You can read an article about the idea here. Their complexity, and their brilliant design suggested to him that they may well have been made by a cobbler, a professional shoemaker!
Today, there aren't many traditional cobblers left. Most shoes are made in factories, but in the past, shoes were made by cobblers. Cobblers were highly skilled professionals. In fact, making a shoe is massively complex and can involve up to 100 steps and until the mid 1800's, there were no machines to do some of the jobs! The first and arguably most important stage is the creation of the last. The last is a mould of the foot, like the one I showed the children. It determines the shape of the shoe, the size and even how the wearers weight will be distributed. In recent times, every different size and style of shoe uses a different last, and of course there are different lasts for the left and right feet. This wasn't always the case though. Originally, cobblers wouldn't have needed quite so many lasts. Each size only came in 2 widths - slim or fat (or stout). To make the shoe a 'fat' shoe, leather was fitted over the slim last to increase the width. There was also no difference between the lasts used for left and right feet. Up until the 1800's shoes were straight and probably very uncomfortable! If you would like to learn more about the history of shoes, or about how to make shoes, click here, here or here.