Custom Renaissance Boots » Period Shoes http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com Made to order footwear for Renaissance Faires, SCA, fantasy and science fiction fans Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:42:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Early 20th Century slipper http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/2010/03/early-20th-century-slipper/ http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/2010/03/early-20th-century-slipper/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:13:05 +0000 admin http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/?p=201 Last year I had a request for a 1920s style dance slipper. The woman didn’t realize that we do only custom work and that she could choose whatever she’d like to have us replicate. She said that she’d think about it and disappeared. Out of the blue, a picture of a designer shoe from 1925 [...]]]> Last year I had a request for a 1920s style dance slipper. The woman didn’t realize that we do only custom work and that she could choose whatever she’d like to have us replicate. She said that she’d think about it and disappeared. Out of the blue, a picture of a designer shoe from 1925 showed up in my inbox with a note that this was her dream shoe.  The slipper itself won’t be a problem. We can create it in the leather she’d like instead of a fabric and add some period details to dress it up. The heel however is going to be an issue. It’s the waisted heel style that is quite common in historic shoes and difficult to impossible to find in the right size, height and configuration. After her request last year, I explored the possibility of recreating the shape and making a mold to do the heels myself. I dug out the instruction book for mold making from a project 20 years ago (a valid reason for never throwing anything away) and located a source for small quantities of the resins. As soon the dancer decides on a heel height I can pull the right last and make a prototype. Being able to create exactly the right style heel for period shoes would open up a huge variety of styles that we can replicate with much better accuracy. I love it when a customer is up for helping us expand our horizons.

Vionnet1925 front

Vionnet shoe from 1925

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]]> http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/2010/03/early-20th-century-slipper/feed/ 0 The Ivy League came calling http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/2010/01/the-ivy-league-came-calling/ http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/2010/01/the-ivy-league-came-calling/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:05:46 +0000 admin http://www.customrenaissanceboots.com/?p=116 I had an interesting call from a nice young man in the Yale University theater department. He needed a source for period shoes for a production that they’ll be doing this spring. I explained that we are totally custom and that he’d need to provide me with actual foot outlines and measurements for us to [...]]]> I had an interesting call from a nice young man in the Yale University theater department. He needed a source for period shoes for a production that they’ll be doing this spring. I explained that we are totally custom and that he’d need to provide me with actual foot outlines and measurements for us to use to match the wearer with a properly sized last to build the shoes on. Our preferred way to work is to send his actors the shoes with no finish insole and no sole to try on before we finished them for wearing. That would give them the opportunity to make us aware of any problems so they could be corrected before the finish work was done. Lead time would be three to four weeks depending on the styles he picked plus shipping time for the fitting and delivery. If he has a time crunch, we will do them without the fitting, which means that he has to be dead on with all the specs.

It will be fun to have another play to do. We haven’t done a theater production since the Lord Of The Rings musical in Toronto and enjoyed the challenge.

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