Shoes

Shoe (shoo) 1. An outer covering for the human foot, made of leather, canvas, etc. and usually having a stiff or thick sole and a heel, sometimes restricted to footwear that does not cover the ankle, as distinguished from a BOOT Webster's New World Dictionary

Although the definition of a shoe is straightforward, shoes come in all types, sizes, uses and materials, that is what makes shoes so fascinating! We all wear shoes - we probably are wearing some now. Although we tend to take for granted, they tell us interesting information. Shoes unite the world. Different cultures, religions and geographical areas. Shoes even unite us with history as we look at how shoes have evolved throughout the ages.

Presented here are some facts and depictions of shoes which are historic as well as very uncommon. The material has been extracted from "All About Shoes: Footwear Through the ages", Produced by The Bata Shoe Organization, 1994, and from the Teacher's Manual "All About Shoes", a cross-curricular kit produced by The Bata Shoe Museum and Science and Technology in Education Alliance (STEA). Reprinted with the permission of Sheila Knox, Education Co-ordinator for The Bata Shoe Museum; and Jim Willson, Executive Director of STEA.

The Bata Shoe Museum is open to the public where you can see many more shoes of historic and educational relevance. Please feel free to visit the website, www.batashoemuseum.ca.

Fashion and aesthetics are the primary ambitions of this beautiful pair of hand embroidered satin boots by Pint, late 19th century, France.

Pope Pius VII, eighteenth century Roman Catholic Pontiff, wore this custom-made red velvet shoes with gold embroidery and cruciform motif.

"Clogs" is the down-home shoe term for footwear made either completely of wood or having a wooden sole to which a variety of coverings(leather, rubber, cloth, for example) might be attached. For more than 10 centuries, waterproof clogs have proven themselves to be reliable and durable footwear, especially in France, the Netherlands and Belgium. In fact, until the end of the 18th century in Europe, clogs were what the majority of people wore on their feet. Though wooden shoes have been sometimes fashionably dressed up (decorated clogs were worn for festive occasions), they seem most comfortable being what they essentially always have been—inexpensive, protective, no-nonsense footwear for the masses. In one form or another, wooden shoes span the globe and the ages, providing practical and comfortable footwear for everyone.

Safety on wet slippery ship decks is the role of this 19th century American sailors shoe made from hemp cord, which stays rough and thus allows traction even when wet.

First Lady footwear: these shoes were especially designed for Patricia Nixon by Herbert Levine Inc. for the inaugural ball of Richard Nixon’s second term as president of the United States. January 20, 1973.

These extraordinary steel sabatons form part of suit armour worn by 15th century nobleman in what is now Southern Germany. The unnaturally long pointed toes indicate that shoe fashions of the time even extended into military wear.

Basket-like, flat-soled fundawara boots made from rice straw are traditionally used in the mountainous northern regions of Japan to make path in the snow around houses.

Protection and performance of both represented in this double rubber-walled insulated boot of 1980. Designed for U.S. military personnel serving in the sub-zero Arctic, the boot protect the foot from the extreme cold, it can also be pressurized while the wearer is in flight and during parachute jump.

Three mules from 17th century Europe make use of luxury fabric; fine silk embroidery(left), silver laced over velvet(middle), and brocaded Chinese silk (right). During this period mules were popular with both men and women.

This attractive pair of funerary shoes came from the ancient civilization of Thebes, based in central Egypt on the Nile river. More than 3000 years old, the shoes, from a royal tomb, are made of palm fibre and grass and have slightly upturned toes.

Now it is time to educate and entertain ourselves about shoes. Go ahead and scroll through and see how much you know, and how much you can learn!!

Shoe and Foot Sayings

Shoe-related careers

For those who want to seek careers in the shoe business

shoe cutter	. . . . .	shoe pattern-maker
shoe designer		shoe decorator
shoe manufacturer		shoemaker
assembler		shoe mender
shoe inspector		museum curator
shoe historian		shoe shiner
archeologist		shoe wholesaler
shoe store manager		shoe buyer
chiropodist		orthopaedic shoemaker
orthopaedic surgeon		pedicurist
physiotherapist		podiatrist
orthopaedic shoe retailer		prosthetist/orthotist
reflexologist		orthopaedic shoe repairer
ballet shoe mistress

Time to test your general knowledge

• The average person walks the equivalent of four-and a half times around the earth in a lifetime.
• One quarter of all bones in the human body can be found in the feet.
• People who are left-handed are also left-footed, having the tendency to put their left foot forward first instead of their right.
• The average person takes 10,000 steps per day.
• The human foot has 18 muscles and 52 bones.
• The original French version of the Cinderella story features a fur slipper instead of glass one. The confusion arose from the similarity of a French word for white fur (vair), which resembled the word glass (verre).
• The foot measurement was developed in 1320 in England by Edward II, whose foot measured 36 barleycorns. Each barleycorn was about one third of an inch, and that added up to 12 inches or one “foot”.
• An old Anglo-Canadian tradition puts old shoes, always a woman's or child’s, in the wall of a new house or addition, which guarantees good luck for the people who live there.