Obscure Interests — Shoes Shine Throughout Time
One of the nicest things about the modern internet is the ability to research truly obscure subjects at a moments notice.
To my surprise, my attempt to find information about medieval shoes produced not a small bit of midly useful information, but an entire manual about the subject.
The site includes a glossary of shoe related terms, details on how shoes were made, explanations of the differences between right, left and straight shoes, and many very useful illustrations. The section on how to make medieval shoes for modern activties uses close-up color photos to explain each step. A truly great resource for any SCA newbie.
Shoes came in all varieties, and changed greatly based on the era and location. A viking and a celt would not have worn the same shoes even if they lives during the same time period. One nice thing about this site, is that it specifies which shoes were worn in which areas as well as eras.
Finally, the site has a comprehensive bibliography for your further study. So have fun, and get to work on that garb.
research, obscure, medieval, shoe, shoes, SCA, viking, celt, garb, Society for Creative Anachronism, renaissance, history, how-to, boot, boots
December 13th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Thank you very much for the link to this site! I have searching the web, and I guess I should have known better and stuck more to the SCA sights, and until now I hadn’t been able to find as wonderful a site! It is as amazing as you have said above. Thank you very much for shedding some more light on my leather boot making projects!