The Crispin Colloquy

Chuck,
I've gotta say that work is amazing!
Yeah, it does look like a Hussar type boot (- not slagging it BTW) and to do the last as well... That's something.
G'd on ya mate. - Definitely NOT a load of Codswollop!
more power to y'awl.
Tom.

Tom,

Now there's a word that makes me feel old, "Gonads" Haven't heard that one in a long time.

Joel

Whipping the dog.

Tom O'Sullivan et al.

I made up threads yesterday and plaited on bristles. When I got back to the work today all that remained of the bristles were short tattered remnants with tooth indents. So I am wondering, what is the appropriate shoemaking term for welting made from dogskin?

I've had no luck addressing this dog in Welsh, Kiwi or Rude languages and it was very slow to run on sheep. Today it blossomed, perhaps as a direct result of a feed of bristles. It did a very respectable slow motion tip-toe approach to three sheep. If it doesn't make good welts then I will untan it and rename it "Lord Walkup On Eggs"

A dumb question by a non-historian. While traveling in Italy, I saw saddles that were sewn with Catgut. Catgut was described as sheep intestine that was "tanned" streched and twined and was tougher than any other then known fiber. So here is my question: Were historic shoes sewn with Catgut as were old saddles? I'm not inferring that whipping the cat would simply be sewing with catgut mind you, it just brought up the question.
David, catgut can be made from any animal, even dog, except ones that just ate birstles and poked holes in their intestines.
Lyle

David,
I think your dog's deaf.
T.

David,

Dog would be to thin and soft for welts, it does make great lining leather. If I remember well it is waterproof since dogs have very few sweat glands, most of their sweat glands are in their paws. That would also explain the slow motion tip-toe approach to the sheep. And when I come to think of it, a diet of pig bristles may have something to do with that as well.

Rob

David,
It may work, but I imagine it will be hard to contol your boots around a female in heat.

The dog is certainly paying attention now its fate is in the balance, even before I offered it the use of my hearing aids!

Lyle, an interesting association of catgut with cat whipping. Perhaps it is so. How will we ever know?

Art of Leather Manufacture , Watt, 1885, has the following to say about making catgut (much condensed here):

Cords from sheepskins (erroneously called catgut)

Cleanse and wash the intestines. Soak and remove adhering fat. Steep for several days in many changes of water. Remove peritoneal and mucous coats by scaping with the back of a knife blade, removing these from small to large end. Soak 24 hours. Scrape. Cut off 8 feet length of larger ends for sausage skins. Cure remainder by stratifying in salt for some days. Soak in water for a night. Immerse in ley (lye?) comprising 8 oz pearlash dissolved in 4 gallons of water. When sufficiently acted upon draw gut several times through a brass thimble open at both ends, sort by size. ....

Then follow instructions for further processing for tennis bats, whipcords and musical instrument strings.

I learned "codswallop" from June Swann of all people, 30 year's ago while studying over there in Northampton. I kinda doubt she'd have used it if it was known to refer to "gonads", but who knows.

As to thonging, versus thread-sewning ("wang" or "whang" leather in USA 'Hillbilly'): in the past 280-odd years I'm only aware of some Scottish "brogues" thonged together from mid-18thc. In all other respects like an "English" shoe, except instead of threads they were thonged. There are also basic "curan" or "pampootie" shoes (more like moccasins)from the west coast of Scotland, Aran, and the Isles (Ireland?), and a bunch of "ethnic" footwear from Europe (and elsewhere) that is thonged.

Chuck,

Sorry to be replying late to you. From what we can piece together, whole-front (crimped) boots with side-seams originated in the East, and were an Eastern European style (by late 16thc. at least) before they made their way into France, England, etc. around the Napoleonic Wars, when these counties dressed their "Hussar" troops in versions of Hungarian dress. "Hussar" and "Hessian" boots with the intentional wrinkles on the instep are an example. The English, according to Rees (1813) found the wrinkles ugly at first, and they perfected smooth crimping ["blocking"] of boot fronts.

I'm not aware of any whole-front boots surviving, or described, in England or America during the "colonial" period. All the surviving boots from the 1700s have vamps with tongues let into the leg, like a riding boot, and seams up the center back.

Chuck, Al,

I have read somewhere that the pipes (wrinkles) at the ankle were not only intentional but very deliberate and controlled. I'm not sure how they did that but the upshot would be that there would not be four pipes on the left boot and five on the right. Nor would one set of pipes begin and end higher than on the other boot.

If you have any documentation or insights into how this was done...strings wrapped around the crimping board?...I would be interested in it.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC

Al,

Well according to the Oxford source (and I believe that the OED reiterated the point) the first recorded usage of "codswallop" was not until the (early?) 1960's.

So June was at the cutting edge of fashion, I suppose, in the late '70's. The word is so "Victorian" sounding, however, that it kind of makes you get all "stuffy" and stiff just saying it.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC

I've made gut from sheep runners - this was like 30 years ago, and it come out like rawhide and about as thick as a heavy thread. Probably why they used it for tennis raquettes.

I just rinsed the intestines in a bucket of water down by the creek (didn't want the eels getting it. To turn them inside out you take the end and turn it inside out like a sock then fill the trough that forms with water. The weight of the water turns it inside out. and you just sort of rub or scrape the fatty stuff off with a thumb nail (from memory). After that I stretched the runner back and forward between a couple of trees until it had dried. Don't remember twisting it.

More power to y'awl
Tom.

DW,

How to form the wrinkles on various styles ("Hessians", "Hussars", etc.) is described (and illustrated) in the book below, if you can cope with the French. It's special creases made into the boot-tree, that the finished bool-leg is molded down into if I'm recalling correctly. I have a reprint of this book, but haven't looked therein for a year or two:









ref.12153

550,00 -EUR



9 illustration(s)
A voir Nouvelle Encyclopédie des Arts et Métiers. Art de la Chaussure considérée dans toutes ses parties. Contenant L'Art du Cordonnier pour homme et pour les femme ; de la Botterie civile et militaire ; du Cordonnier fournisseur pour la troupe ; du Pacotilleur ; du Fabricant de galoches, chaussons de lisières et autres ; du cordonnier de Campagne ; du Formier en bois, et à la mécanique en fer, cuivre ou acier ; marchand de crépin, etc, du Sabotier élégant et grossier ; du Fabricant de souliers corioclaves, du socle, du patin, etc, des Chaussures antiques, théatrales, des peuples étrangers et des tribus sauvages, et même d'un traité sur le Savetier sédentaire et du Carreleur de soulier ambulant.
se vend a Paris, Chez Monsieur M. Flamant , 1824, in-8 (20,8 x 12,5 cm), xix - 382 pp. - 1 feuillet blanc, demi-maroquin vert (quelques usures et épidermures), dos lisse orné d'un décor de filet et de fleuron, tranches bleutées et jaspées. (Reliure de l'époque).
Edition originale assez rare enrichie d'un frontispice, représentant l'intérieur d'un atelier et de la boutique d'un cordonnier et de 24 planches hors textes ornés de 250 figures, le tout est rehaussés de jolies couleurs. "Cet ouvrage est terminé par une table des noms et des adresses des principaux maîtres de la capitale, ainsi que celles des Corroyeurs, Tanneurs, marchands de crépin, etc. Dans ce traité complet, on trouve décrit, pour la première fois, les inventions, secrets, améliorations et perfectionnement que ces professions ont reçues depuis un demi-siècle, et particulièrement depuis la révolution" . Au début de l'ouvrage, envoi sous forme de lettre au ton paternaliste caractéristique pour l'époque qu'un duc de Larochefoucault - Liancourt adresse au Directeur de la nouvelle édition de l'Encyclopédie des Arts et Métiers à propos de ce livre. Envoi manuscrit de l'auteur au bas du titre à M. Hyacinthe Boisin. Rousseurs.