Shoes - A Look Back In History
The first type of footwear for humans was animal skins or furs wrapped around the feet
. The body of a well-preserved ice man nearly 5000 years old wears leather foot coverings stuffed with straw. Shoes in some form or another have been around for a very long time. The Moccasin a shoe made of one piece of material drawn up and around the foot, served as a basic foot covering for people in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Sandals were popular in warmer climates, the ancient Egyptians wore sandals made of palm leaves and papyrus they are sometimes seen on the feet of Egyptian statues. According to Herodotus sandals of papyrus were a part of the required and characteristic dress of the Egyptian priests.
The ancient Greeks wore a sandal made of willow leaves, twigs and fibres. The boot sandal that rose above the middle of the leg, worn principally by tragic actors, horsemen, hunters, and by men of rank or authority. The sole of the latter was sometimes made much thicker than usual by the insertion of slices of cork, so as to add to the stature of the wearer.
During Roman times footwear showed little distinction between male and female. One usually wore sandals tied round the ankle with thin strips of leather. There were of course other types of footwear from a simple piece of leather wrapped around the foot, there was also a hob nailed military boot as well as a wooden clog, worn only by poor peasants and slaves.
As the centuries continued it led the way for a more stylized shoes to be worn among the more wealthy people. Around the year 1500 a raised heel was made it was thought to be first for riders to stop their shoe slipping in the stirrups.
The simple riding heel gave way to a more stylized heel over its first three decades. Beginning with the French heel heights among men crept up, often becoming higher and thinner until they were no longer useful while riding instead relegated to court wear. By late 1600 heels for men were commonly between three and four inches in height.
High heels have been worn by women earlier both as a fashion statement and to increase height. At least as early as 1533 the diminutive Italian wife of Henry II King of France commissioned a cobbler to fashion her a pair of heels, both for fashion and to suggest greater height. There was a type of platform made intended to protect the feet of the wearer from dirt and mud. Platform shoes were banned in Venice as early as 1430.
High heeled shoes quickly caught on with the fashion conscious men and women of the French court, and spread to pockets of nobility in other countries. The term well heeled became synonymous with opulent wealth both men and women continued wearing heels as a matter of fashion throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
When the French Revolution drew near in the late 1790 the practice of wearing heels fell into decline in France due to its associations with wealth and aristocracy. Throughout most of the 1800s flat shoes and sandals were usual for both sexes but the heel resurfaced in fashion during the late 1800s among women.
Up to 1850 all shoes were made with practically the same hand tools that were used in Egypt as early as the 14th century BC as a part of a sandal makers equipment being the curved awl, the chisel like knife and the scraper. The shoemakers of the thirty three intervening centuries had added only a few simple tools such as the pincers, the lap stone, the hammer and a variety of rubbing sticks used for finishing edges and heels. Today machinery has made footwear fast to make and affordable to buy.
Down to the twenty first century the humble shoe has taken a few turns today it is nearly anything goes from the sandal, court, platform, high heels just to name a few. Next time you put your shoes on or buy a new pair think about how far we have come.
by: Ray Schaefer
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