Kit: Shoes

Shoes have a reputation as being the most difficult piece of kit to make.

Shoe Design

There are lots of different styles of shoes.

Links

We are hoping to put up our own guidelines to making shoes soon. In the meantime, these webpages offer good advice:

• Birka Traders' Simple Medieval Shoe does exactly what it says, with clear simple steps on how to make an authentic shoe. If you only read one webpage, make it this one!
• I. Marc Carlson's Footwear of the Middle Ages is the definitive page on just about every aspect of shoe making: information on shoes, patterns, stitches, dubbing with tallow…
• Making Mediaeval Shoes is a nice simple guide to making turnshoes.
• The Vikings! Basic Kit Guide - Shoes has lots of advice and lots of different patterns.
• Regia Anglorum - Basic Clothing Guide - Shoes has a selection of pictures of different styles, and a pattern for one of the styles.
• Keith Nelson's Viking Age Costumes has a very basic kit guide, which several shoe patterns.

Buying Shoes

Shoes are the item that most people give up making and instead just buy. In general there are two types of shoes to buy: hand-stitched or machine-stitched. Obviously hand-stitched would be better, but machine-stitched are much cheaper and perfectly adequate for our purposes…

Links

• Viking Crafts offer hand-stitched shoes and boots, made to order. Bunni has their boots.
• Ana Period Shoes- Dark Age Footware has a wonderful selection of hand-stitched turnshoes, plus a cheaper machine-stitched shoe. Several members of Wychwood got shoes from Ana at Hastings.
• Historic Shoes- Early Period Turn Shoes has a selection machine stitched styles. Cheaper than Ana, but the ones with toggles use plastic toggles rather than real horn. Bunni has their Style A1. Email them to check their stock rather than using the site's ordering function.
• Time Warrior sell a selection of shoes and boots, most with a hard sole. Apparently they are made by a professional cobbler. Freya has their three-toggle ankle boots.