[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome, everybody.
Thank you so much for joining us in today's program, presented
as part of the Wignall Museum's Home Edition,
a series of curated artists talks,
workshops, and discussions featuring
artists and cultural workers.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I'm the director and curator at the Wignall Museum.
The Wignall Museum is a teaching museum
and interdisciplinary art space that introduces Chaffey College
students, faculty, staff, and community members
to innovative contemporary art objects and ideas.
By fostering critical thinking, visual literacy, discourse,
and empathy, the museum seeks to enhance
the intellectual and cultural life of our community.
We want to take a moment to recognize that we're situated
on the Rancho Cucamonga campus of Chaffey College, which
resides on the traditional and unseated lands of the Tongva
people.
We offer our respect to the elders, both past, present,
and future.
Hello, my name is Roman Stollenwerk.
I'm the assistant curator at the Wignall Museum.
Please visit our website at www.chaffey.edu/wignall.
And hello, everyone.
My name is Andy Hadle.
I'm the preparator at the museum.
Let me give you a quick breakdown of today's program.
Here in a moment, we're going to have Danielle Giudici
Wallis present for about 30 minutes,
and then with the remaining time, as Roman had mentioned,
we're going to do some Q&A. And you can leave those questions
in the chat.
Great.
Thanks, Roman and Andy.
So we're really thrilled to have our friend and colleague
Danielle with us today, so let me share her bio.
And then we'll start her presentation.
So Danielle Giudici Wallis is the sole proprietor
of Giudici Handcrafted, a bespoke footwear company based
in Redlands, California.
She designs and makes custom, made-to-measure footwear one
shoe at a time.
Trained as an artist with a BA in visual arts
from Antioch College and an MFA from Stanford University,
she applies her knowledge and skills
into creating handmade footwear.
She believes in the importance of shifting
our culture of consumerism toward slow fashion, which
values the quality of construction,
the durability of materials, and timeless designs.
So please join me in welcoming Danielle.
So thanks for having me.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and hopefully,
provide some insight.
It seems really weird through the screen,
but I will do my best.
And we can always switch over to more live demo if you want.
All right, so let's go ahead, shoemaking 101.
So I wanted to start and talk a little bit about the tools.
There's a lot of really specific tools for shoemaking.
These are sort of my favorite things so far.
It's funny when you start shoemaking.
There's just so many materials and tools to gather,
and I think that we get a little overwhelmed.
And those of us who are tool-obsessed
get a little carried away, but you
find that just like you have your favorite clothes,
you have your favorite tools that you always
go back to and wind up using the most of anything else.
And the hammers on the right are my favorite.
The one on the far left is a French hammer,
and that's really used for like shaping
once the shoe is on the last.
You can pound the leather, and the leather's really malleable.
And you can pound it to shape.
You can pound out wrinkles.
And it's got a nice face on it, so it's not
going to mar the upper.
Or the little stubby one, that's kind
of more of the workhorse when you're
pounding on heels or for nailing things.
And then the rawhide mallet's used
for when you're doing punching so you don't mess up
the end of your punches.
Or same thing if you were doing woodworking with your chisels,
you just want to protect the end of your tools
so that you're not splaying it all out.
And then on the right side are some different types of knives.
The two on the left are my favorite knives.
They're Japanese skiving knives, and skiving
is an operation where you're thinning the leather where
it joins so that the total thickness would equal
the thickness of one piece.
So each piece is skived down half way,
and then those two are put together.
And you don't get a big, lumpy piece of leather there.
The circular knife is a traditional knife
called a round knife, and you can use it
in all sorts of ways.
But I was using it mostly for what's
called clicking, which is cutting out pattern pieces.
And apparently, they called it clicking
because before the Industrial Revolution started,
they would make these pattern pieces,
and they would edge them with some kind of metal.
And so the knives would make a little clicking sound
when they were cutting out the leather.
So they lay the pattern on top of the leather
and cut around it, and that's why
it's called a clicking knife.
The green handled one's just kind of a general purpose tool,
and then the one with the little funny lip
is actually a lip knife.
And you can go around the edge of your sole.
That way, you don't catch the upper.
You wind up making your own tools a lot, too,
or modifying them to suit your own purposes.
So I wound up really sharpening that in a way
that I can use it when I'm carving the sole,
and we'll see that a little bit later.
These are some other--
we have the rotary punch on the left and dividers,
and that's really for marking the sole.
You can use it for marking stitching, and obviously,
the punch for making your holes for eyelets and grommets.
And then on the right side are the awls,
and it's hard to tell from the photo
whether they're oriented differently.
So one is used for welting, and the other one
is used for sewing the soles on, the outsoles.
Because one goes in and sort of goes flat
so you have room to bring a double needle through,
whereas the other one, it goes--
one goes this way, the other one, sort of vertical
through there.
And even though you're still bringing through two needles,
it's oriented differently because it lines
up the stitching in a different way for the outsole.
And then the other one is a pegging awl.
So a lot of times, older shoes, they actually
would make the hole with the pegging awl
and then use wooden pegs.
Well, in some places, it's still more traditional.
I think in Austria they used to make
pegged shoes more than welted shoes,
and we'll get to that in a little bit.
And these are really the workhorses.
The one on the left is my favorite set of pliers.
These are all called lasting pliers,
and you use them when you're pulling
the upper over the last.
And the last is the shoe form.
So the last is this form, and then
when you're pulling the upper--
so this is an upper.
It's a shoe that hasn't been lasted yet.
And what happens is that upper gets pulled over this form,
and you use these lasting pliers to really pull it in place.
It holds it, and then you have a hammer at the same time.
So it's like a combination pliers and hammer,
and that allows you to really keep
the upper in place while you're moving around the shoe.
And some of them are more narrow.
So when you get to the toe, it's nice to have
you these teeny ones because you need a lot of nails when you
get to those curves just to bunch the leather up in a way
that it's not going to show wrinkles.
And it's similar to stretching a canvas,
where you kind of go back and forth
and all around because you want to keep that tension the same.
And it has to be situated on the last correctly,
or it's not going to fit.
It will look weird.
And then the lasts.
So the interesting thing about lasts
is that they come in these different shapes,
like this is a high heel last.
It's very narrow.
I don't know who could wear this,
but it's from a flea market.
Somebody gave it to me.
All lasts, they have what's called a toe spring,
so here's another one.
And toe spring is that, the way the shoe goes up,
and that situates the shoe so that when you have a heel on,
your toe's not going to be dragging to the ground.
See how it has this little toe spring.
And lasts are made for certain heel heights,
so you can change the heel height
to be like a high heel on this one.
And that's why you get this really different looking curve
on this one.
And in the early days of shoemaking,
they didn't have right foot or left foot.
They only had what was called straight lasts,
and so people just wore the-- it didn't matter
if it was your right or left.
You just wore the same shoe on there.
So the first step in the process is really
working with clients to take their foot measurements,
and example here.
Basically, you're asking people to stand on a piece of paper,
and you're tracing their foot.
And then you're measuring around these certain parts
of the foot.
The most important measurement is that ball measurement,
where your big toe joint and your little toe joint
and across there.
And that's super key, and then also your heel measurements.
Everything sort of triangulates to give you a good fit.
So having all these measurements done well and consistent--
and everybody does it in a slightly different way.
The key is to start to be consistent with it.
And I've been doing this for almost three years now.
In March, it'll be three years.
And sometimes, I still get frustrated with it.
Measuring, it's not forming itself.
Now here's some other drawings.
So you use a flexible tape measure to go around the foot,
and I'm learning more and more about the anatomy
and trying to understand orthotics and pedorthic
conditions.
And a lot of people that want handmade shoes
are people that have conditions that they
can't find a off the shelf shoe that
will fit and be comfortable, so a lot of it
is really trying to understand what their issues are,
whether it's bunions or different things in terms
of flexibility with their toes.
How to make the shoe stiffer, make it more flexible,
there's all sorts of different issues
that I'm trying to understand.
And lately, I started also carving my own lasts,
which might be a little insane.
Usually, you can buy a last off the shelf,
and they have different types of lasts.
So some of them have joints, like this one's a solid last.
This one has a joint.
This one, I've carved, and it's cut right here on the bandsaw.
And there's a screw here holding it.
And the reason why they are built this way
is so that you can remove--
this is called the cone.
You can remove the cone in the last
and get the last out of the shoe, which isn't always
an easy task because you basically
form fit this leather.
And then you've got this really stiff object
that you're trying to remove, whereas your foot,
it's flexible.
It can move.
It can come out of the shoe easily.
And it's always a challenge to pull the last.
And there's a saying.
It says the last comes first because you
need to translate those measurements from the drawings
on to the last and make sure all of those measurements line up.
And those kind of landmarks of the joint
and the heel and the short heel and the long heel, everything
has to kind of line up with the measurements in order
for the fit to be good.
So once you have the last shaped the way you want it,
there's different ways to do this,
and they used to use just paper.
But one way to do it now, which is very easy--
I just dropped a bunch of stuff--
is to go ahead, and you tape that last with masking tape.
This one I used paper underneath so
that I could then pull it off.
And you can draw directly on the last,
making sure you have those major points, like the joint, marked,
and you design the pattern around those landmarks.
And I don't know if you can see.
You can get really detailed with your drawing and decide,
oh, I want broguing, and you can add all that to the pattern.
The toe cap, everything can be drawn on the taped version,
and then you remove that.
And you take that, and you actually just peel it up.
And you plop down on a piece of paper, and you can transfer.
So here's the piece of tape.
You peel it off.
You cut it down the center, so you've got basically
what's half the shoe.
And you put it on paper, and then you can translate that
into a drawing.
So you're taking this 3D form.
You're transferring it to 2D, and then you're drawing out
your pattern in a 2D situation.
And then once you've got that, you
can make your pattern pieces from that.
So this is--
I dropped the other ones.
This is part of the pattern.
This is the lining.
So all your pattern pieces are made from that drawing.
Danielle, can I interject and ask a question here?
Sure.
So in this image, so we see the drawing on paper.
We see the pattern cutout in the front of the image,
and then is that a last with a pattern on top of it?
So that's the taped--
so that's actually a hollow--
Oh, OK.
OK.
So this is a last for that shoe.
So you have really big feet, but it just fits right over that.
So you can see.
So then once you've got all your pattern pieces,
you're cutting things out, which is called
clicking like we talked about.
And so with a boot, you have a lot of pieces to put together.
It just depends on what style of shoe how many pieces you have,
and a lot of people have started making
sneakers and all those little bits that go on sneakers.
Everything has to be cut separately,
and it all has to be skived.
So when you're skiving, like I said,
those are my favorite knives, and you're using
those to just bevel that edge.
And you can either do a narrow skive or a wider skive,
depending on what you need.
And here, I think this is the piece that
goes right here on the end of the shoe,
so that would be more of a narrow skive.
But then if you see the folded edge,
that, you need a wider skive because in order
to give kind of a nice finished edge,
you can fold over the material.
And it just gives you a nice smooth finished edge.
And one of the things that was really challenging
was just learning to sharpen knives and keep them really
sharp because if they're not sharp,
they really distort the leather and stretch it out.
And then you wind up cursing at yourself, starting over.
When you're building the shoe, you have to cut sole leather,
and sole leather is about a quarter inch thick.
So it's really heavy to cut out.
And then you shape it.
So there's that curve that we talked about,
and some people have more of a curve
on the bottom of their foot.
And if you've ever had orthotics made, some people,
they'll actually have a steeper curve here on the heel.
So anyway, the leather gets wet, and you soak it.
And then you let it sort of temper, and it softens up.
Some people use bicycle tubes and wrap them around,
but I wind up using nails because it
dries quicker because the rubber is not holding in the moisture.
So that's all just molded, basically,
to the bottom of the last, and then it's trimmed down
to match the shape.
And then once that's done, using my dividers
there to mark the edge, and this is
called carving the hold fast.
And this is a very traditional way of making shoes.
Some people will only carve the upper part, and the heel part,
they'll leave in a different configuration, which
is actually on this piece.
I did this where you leave this part a little bit thicker.
And it's still sewn, but it's not going to be welted.
So the welt would end here.
So it's [INAUDIBLE] and there's sort of a ridge.
And what happens is I'm using my lip there.
So I've sharpened in a specific way to be able to cut that out,
and that creates this hold fast piece, which will then
get punctured by the awl.
And so the awl will go through and pre-puncture
all of those holes that the welt will be sewn on with.
Some people pre-puncture.
Some people don't.
I find it much easier to do that because otherwise, you're
working a little bit blind.
Because once you pull the upper over that rib that you created,
it's hard to see, obviously, where you're
coming out on the other side.
Closing, which is sewing the uppers,
this is before it gets all put together.
I don't know why they call it closing, but they do.
And it used to be done, apparently, in sort
of pre-industrial times.
A lot of the women did all the closing at home,
so they worked in sewing machines at home just making
uppers, sewing the uppers.
And it was piecework, and they'd get paid for the piecework.
And then they'd send it off into the shop,
and then the shoemaker would take the upper
and do the lasting and finishing on it.
And everybody in the old days used
to do a different job because the designers
or whoever ran the factory, they didn't
want people to have the knowledge of all
the different steps because then they could open their own shop
if they knew all the steps.
So it's very siloed, like one person did this.
One person did that.
And each step was kind of a different specialty.
So lasting.
Once you've got your upper sewn, you're
putting your upper on top of the shoe,
and you've got two layers.
Well, actually, you've got three layers.
You've got the lining, and that gets lasted first.
That's the lining all lasted.
And then on top of that, you have a toe puff.
So there's a thicker piece of material.
It's a veg-tan leather.
This is actually going to be a heel stiffener.
So you can see it's a little bit pre-shaped.
I stretched it around the form.
With the toe puff, after the lining is lasted,
you take that top puff, and you last that.
And that needs to dry completely because what happens then is it
gets sanded down and shaped because even though it's just
a thin piece of leather-- it's only two to three ounce veg-tan
leather--
it can still change the toe unless it's really shaped.
So you want to spend some time and feather it out and make
sure it meets your final vision.
And then once that's done, then you last the upper.
And again, using your lasting pliers,
going all the way around the shoe,
and pulling everything tight and pulling out all the wrinkles.
And again, it takes like more nails
around the toe, more nails around the heel
to get that nice and smooth.
And then those nails are pounded down,
so that just holds your upper in place.
And some people will remove the nails
after they pound them down.
It does get glued, so it'll stay with the contact cement.
It gets glued, and then you can pound them down and remove
them, or you can pound them down and then remove them
as you go with the welting process.
So remember, we carved that channel, so
that channel's in there.
And now you're going back through.
You're going through the channel,
through the lining on the upper into this little strip, which
is called the welt. And that welt gets sewn
on all the way around the shoe.
So this is the shoe being welted.
So you can see that's kind of sticking out,
and that provides a sewing surface when you
put the sole on the other side.
So a lot of times, if you see stitching around your shoe,
a lot of times, it's fake.
But in this case, it's not, so that's all sewn on.
And it's a really lengthy process.
It's very physically demanding.
You find there's weird muscles that you never
knew existed in your shoulders.
Shoemaking has got to be the worst thing for your posture
because you're always like this, hunched over,
but it's really satisfying when you get done.
I used to hate this part the most,
and now I kind of enjoy it.
You have to be really meditative about it,
but sometimes, it's really hard to find that hole.
And it takes a really long time to stitch the welt
all the way around.
Once that's all the way on, because of that channel,
it can create a hollow, and you also
have a shank that you put in there, which is a metal piece.
There's metal or wood shanks.
This is a wood shank.
And that just provides support in between where your heel is.
It's basically a little bridge to give you support there.
So once that shank is in, and it's covered
with a piece of leather.
And cork fills in here so that you get a nice flat surface
all the way across.
And it gets sanded down nice and smooth.
And then you're going to attach the outsole,
and basically, again, it's just a piece
of thick, hearty leather that gets glued on
and then trimmed down all the way around to match.
It's going to be glued to the welt as well
as the bottom of the shoe, and then that will be stitched on.
And there's that special awl for stitching,
and there's also a tool--
sorry, I can't find it.
But it's a little rotary tool that
will mark where your stitches are,
and they come in different stitches per inch.
So a lot of super fine, high-end shoes,
they'll sew as many as 16, 32 stitches
per inch, which is just insane.
I'm good if I get six, but I'm happy with four most
of the time.
The European tradition is to have lots of stitches per inch,
but I make the rougher shoe.
And then once you're done with the stitching,
and you have the outsole on, and you start to build the heel.
And so there's different ways to do it.
You can buy pre-stacked leather that's glued together,
and you can nail that on.
Or you can build your own stack, and you can do that in place.
Again, it depends on how you learned,
but you can build it up.
You can glue a layer and build it up,
and another layer and another layer
until you've got your heel height that you're looking for.
And then these are just some samples of shoes
that I've done.
The green boots are a stitched down method,
so instead of lasting it, they actually
get glued down to what's called the midsole.
So instead of having the welt, there's a midsole,
and it gets glued down to that.
And then it gets stitched to the midsole,
and then there's another layer that's the outsole.
And then there's the heel building up to that.
And then the one on the right, they're
more of the traditional style like I've been explaining.
Actually, I think they were this one.
And then these are, on the left, some sandals that I just did.
They were called my California chopines,
and chopines were a shoe that was very popular in Venice.
And I guess the height of the chopine related
to the level of nobility, but they
got to be ridiculous in terms of height.
And women had to use walking sticks to steady themselves
as they walked.
But platforms have been around for a really long time, which
I thought was super interesting, and I
think they reached really the height
of their popularity in Venice.
And then they even passed laws about how high they can be
because they were problematic.
OK.
Are there questions?
Thanks, Danielle.
What a treat to see your whole process through.
Thank you so much.
So yeah, we absolutely have some questions.
Maybe I can start with one, and then I
think Andy has a series of questions from Jason
that we'll ask, or Jay.
But as we learned from your bio, your background
is in studio practice work as an artist,
and so I'm just curious how your studio practice informs
shoemaking.
I mean, obviously, they're all sculptures.
You made sculptures.
These are sculptural forms, but it'd
be interesting to hear what you think about that.
Well, I think that's why I was drawn to last making,
because it's certainly not the most economical way
to go about things.
But it really appealed to me.
And actually, I found out after I started shoemaking
that my great grandfather and my great uncle
who were both employed as last makers.
And they were immigrant Italian last makers and shoemakers.
They worked [INAUDIBLE] doing last making.
So I was drawn to that.
I mean, I think I always wanted to make shoes,
and I don't know where it came from,
if it was just like really experiencing [INAUDIBLE]
my grandmother.
I think because my great grandfather was a shoemaker,
my grandmother knew this guy Charlie.
I can't remember his name now, but they had a shoe shop.
And we would go there and always visit with Charlie,
and I think that sort of started some spark early on,
like my fascination with the big machinery and everything
and all the tools and the smells.
It just smells really nice, the leather, and I don't know.
There's something about the whole ambience of shoemaking.
But I do think it's definitely sculptural.
It moves back and forth, in terms of--
I guess I wanted to make more functional work,
and that was part of the draw towards shoes, as well.
But now that I'm making more functional work,
I want to make more unfunctional work,
so I don't know if there's any happy medium there
that I can find.
But I think they definitely go back and forth.
OK.
I'm going to ask a couple of questions on behalf
of Jason in the chat here.
He has kind of a multiple part thing.
We'll start off with what are your thoughts
on fast fashion versus slow fashion,
particularly in women's fashion?
Do you have anything to say there?
Yeah, I'm not a fan of fast fashion at all.
Even my daughter, you know, she's been great about--
for me, as a mom, sometimes, you go to the easiest thing.
But we try to shop at thrift stores.
We try to not take part in that ridiculous cycle that
is fast fashion.
As an artist and for one that rarely had a desk job,
I was never big on clothes or clothes buying,
so I was always more of a minimalist
when it came to my wardrobe, anyway.
And I felt like one pair of sturdy boots would suit me,
and I'd be happy with that as long as they were comfortable.
So [INAUDIBLE].
The quality is so much better, like buying a few pieces that
are really nice and well-made.
And actually, I find it interesting
how there's so much fast fashion at thrift stores,
but if you can really find clothes
that are from a different time period,
the quality of the clothes are amazing.
Really, truly vintage clothes are just well-made,
and the materials are nicer.
Everything is better, and I try to go there.
Well, I hope that more people share your thoughts on that.
I think, going forward with his question, he says--
I might be paraphrasing a little bit, but--
is it more difficult to shift women
into buying more expensive, and to say expensive
for the sake of sustainability?
That's interesting, so it's funny.
Most of my customers to begin with have been men,
and I think they're more traditional,
in terms of the style.
There's the oxford.
There's the derby.
There's certain styles that are never
going to go out of fashion, and so men
are more willing to spend a little
more to have a custom made shoe because they know it's not
going to be out of fashion.
I think women, we're used to sort of the turnover,
and I was always a big shoe hound and buying shoes.
And I had a real penchant for Doc Martins
in all their different styles, which lasted a long time,
but they're definitely made in a factory.
But I do think it's a different animal, but I think as I go,
I'm trying to steer more women into that direction, too.
I like men's shoes styles, so I think a lot of women do.
But it's hard to find those styles in women's sizes,
so offering that is one way to tempt people over to the more
sustainable fashion.
So a couple of questions from [INAUDIBLE]..
Do you want to make more art shoes?
She was admiring your art shoes sculptures.
I do.
I have a lot of ideas about that.
This idea of landscape in shoes really appeals to me,
and so I've been thinking in terms
of that for a few other endeavors that [INAUDIBLE]..
And then have you had to learn about the anatomy of feet
and the impact of shoes on the health of our bodies?
I know you mentioned that a little bit,
talking about orthopedics.
Have you had to do your own DIY studying?
Yeah, definitely.
I'd love to go back to college for it
and go to a program for it, but it's hard with having kids
that you're sending to college first.
I've got to wait my turn, again.
But I have been doing some research.
The pedorthics books are really expensive, though.
I actually bought one for my birthday last year,
and this one book was $150 because
for, basically, medical books.
And to find a book, there are some books
on shoemaking and pedorthics, but the better resource,
there's great stuff online.
And if anybody is interested, there's
this one guy, Bill Bird.
He's in England, and he's a shoemaker.
He's an orthopedic shoemaker, and he has a YouTube channel.
And he's done a few different series
about orthopedic footwear.
He also did a last making one, and I
would love to go to England and study with him
and just be an apprentice with him.
But I think that's the best way to learn,
is to work with others who are doing it,
but it's hard to find shoemakers around here.
So can I ask a follow up to that,
since you mentioned apprenticing?
Can you tell us briefly about how
you did learn some of the fundamentals
and who you've apprenticed with?
You know, there's a lot of places that will offer you,
you can spend a week here and learn to make a pair of boots.
And I did that almost three years ago now.
I went to Flint, Michigan and worked with a guy there,
and he he's just a small one-person shop boot maker.
And so I spent the week with him in Michigan in March.
It's very cold there, but it was great.
And I learned a lot from him.
We basically built a pair of boots together,
and then when I got back, I was struggling on my own
to keep going and to keep learning.
And I tried to find somebody around here to learn from,
which didn't go well.
Even just like a shoe repair shop, I was like,
I'll come work for you, and they're like,
no, you'll be in a way.
They're very gruff and tend to be male dominated.
And I had seen a--
what's it called?
I can't remember the show, but it's like an ACET arts thing.
And it was about crafts people in the LA area,
and they featured Raul Ojeda.
He runs Willie's Shoe Service.
And so I called up Raul and basically was like,
can I come work for you?
And can I learn from you?
And he was reluctant but gave in,
and so I worked for him for about a year
and was able to learn a lot.
The guy who makes uppers for him,
he's been making shoes since he was 11 years old,
and he's 50 something now.
So I mean, it's just amazing to watch.
It takes me weeks to do what he does in a morning.
He's just really talented.
I have another question from Jason in the chat.
He asks if you worked with crepe shoes,
and I hope I'm saying that correctly.
Crepe soles.
Excuse me.
He says he appreciates Wallabees for this reason,
that they can be resoled.
Is that something that you've worked with?
So I looked into using crepe on those green desert boots,
but apparently, crepe doesn't hold up very well in the heat.
And since this person actually lived in the desert,
I thought that wouldn't be a good mix.
I've also seen it come through when I was working for Raul.
I've seen it come through the shop.
It gets really dirty.
It gets super black, and it looks
ugly after not a long time.
So I tend to stay away from it just
because I haven't been impressed with the way I've seen it wear.
I feel like leather is much more durable,
and then there's sole protectors you can put on.
So it's like a hardened rubber, and that
gives you the non-slip.
So I tend to use just leather soles with [INAUDIBLE]
hard rubber on the bottom.
So Danielle, how long, on average,
does it take you to create a pair of shoes or boots,
and then what is the price range?
What does that look like?
So it depends on the shoe, how long it takes me,
and also, the foot, which I'm learning as I'm
dealing with people that have more foot issues,
it takes me a lot longer because we have to work
through all those issues.
And so basically, I'm still in the learning stage.
Even though they started around $700,
I'm not making any [INAUDIBLE],, [LAUGHS] because it takes me
so long to kind of work things out.
If it was just going to be a standard shoe, like I want
this last, and I want this style,
and I didn't have to do any customization,
I can do it in probably like two weeks.
But because I do a lot of the customization
and going back and forth with fittings,
it just takes me a long time.
So and then a lot of times, I'll work on more than one pair
at a time, which also makes the schedule a little wonky.
I want to kind of go back a little bit
to your talk about tools.
I'm kind of always fascinated, myself,
with just the tools of a trade and how they are very specific.
And it was really interesting seeing your hammers.
Like that tiny hammer, I want to take that home.
I just want that little stubby hammer.
But the hammers, for instance, and--
gosh, I forgot what you called the special pliers
and hammer combo, that specific one.
Yeah.
Was it difficult to find these?
You said it was difficult to find other shoemakers.
Is it difficult to find the tools, and which of those were
you having to make yourself?
So the tools, you can still find them.
You can find a lot on eBay, but there is a company in England
that still makes tools.
They're called George Barnsley and Sons,
and they've been around forever.
And these are my favorite pliers because they have a slope--
see on the end-- which makes it nice to hold.
A lot of them are made in England,
and actually, I went to a lot of flea markets
when I was in Europe last winter.
And I found some great awls and things over there,
but I have a little wood lathe.
So I'll turn handles for the awls,
and I actually have been trying to learn how
to temper the steel in a way.
I bought [INAUDIBLE] so that I could shape my own awls,
and then I'm trying to figure out
how to temper it to make it strong enough.
But I'm not quite there yet with the tempering process
because it's such a small amount of steel.
And getting those temperatures just right
is really going to take a little practice.
But there's a place in LA that does forge stuff,
and I've been calling on them for some help.
And they've been nice about giving me advice
and [INAUDIBLE] there, because I'd love to make-- like even--
there's a lot of iron--
they're called shoe irons.
[INAUDIBLE] grab something.
So there's these.
This is a heel iron, so when you're
working on a shoe on the heel, you can heat this up.
There's a little alcohol lamp, and it lays on there.
It heats up the iron, and then you can use that to--
you notice the edges of--
here.
Hold on.
This is a boot that I made for my husband,
and you can see how shiny it is on the heel.
It's just stacked leather, but you
have to really compress those fibers.
But you're building up the waxes,
and these are all sanded down.
You use glass.
Actually, glass is a really interesting tool.
It's one of my favorites, which is so simple,
but using a piece of glass, you break it in a certain way
so that it creates a little round edge.
I don't know if you can see.
It's slightly rounded, and when it's rounded like that,
you can use it to scrape the leather.
And it brings it to a really smooth finish,
and then you take that iron.
And you can really compress those fibers more
and get that shiny finish.
That's fascinating.
Thank you.
Yeah, like glass.
Who knew?
Yeah, I'm sure you'll always be building your shop, I imagine,
finding new tools and equipment.
So I can see why leather would be a really important material,
but do you also use vegan varieties?
Have you have you found any that work?
So I ordered some of the--
I don't know if anybody's seen it.
It's like a cactus-based leather, and I ordered it.
And they were super sweet, and they sent me all these samples.
But it's so stretchy that it is really hard
to work with for shoes.
I am eventually hoping to get a hold of the mushroom leather
from MycoWorks.
They call it Reishi.
R-E-I-S-H-I. But they're just dealing with companies and, I
think, doing whole sale right now, but hopefully,
at some point, I'm going to be able to get a hold of that
because it's supposed to really have the same properties
as leather.
So I look forward to using that.
And you can use fabric and just back it with leather.
I mean, it's not going to be vegan.
But I haven't done any fabric shoes yet,
but that's sort of on my list to try out.
Oh, Jenny has a question.
How are shoe soles recycled?
Well, if it's leather, then you can resole
any of these welted shoes.
You've got the stitches, and you pull off the leather.
Usually, it's worn through when people
are getting them resoled.
There's not much left to the leather.
The leather is not recycled.
That would be just trash.
I mean, you can reuse bits of it for building up the last.
A lot of times when you're rebuilding the last,
you have to add patches because, oh, it's [INAUDIBLE]..
You can use those bits of leather to build up your last.
But yeah, and then, again, the rubber that gets
put on the bottom, it's pretty thin.
It's really just a sole protector
and gives you a little grip, so it doesn't really
get recycled, unfortunately.
So Danielle, is--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Oh, sorry go ahead.
What I was going to say, once you pull off the sole,
you can definitely use the same welt over and over again
to sew on a new sole.
That makes them last longer, and eventually, you
can even replace the welt.
Super fascinating.
So I have two final questions that we're
asking all of our guests.
So I'm wondering what you're currently
watching, reading, listening to, et cetera that's
making you happy right now or feeling hopeful?
Queen's Gambit, which I think is fabulous.
Say it again.
Queen's Gambit.
Did you watch that?
Oh, yes.
So good.
So I just finished that, and then I'm in a book group.
And we just finished The Lying Life
of Adults, which I didn't really like that much, which
is by Elena Ferrante.
Oh.
But what else?
If anyone is really interested in shoes,
there's a space in New York called Brooklyn Shoe Space.
Well, it used to be a space.
I think, actually, they gave up their shelf space,
but the woman that runs it, her name [? is Hiko. ?] Hiko?
Kiko?
Keiko.
I have a friend named Hiko.
Her name is Keiko.
She has been doing these shoe talks,
and she has been interviewing people
from all over the country and not only country,
all over the world.
And it's been really fascinating to hear about other shoemakers
and their processes.
That's kind of been fun.
It keeps me company while I [INAUDIBLE]..
Excellent.
Good.
It's this little world, but it's kind of tightly connected.
Like people know each other.
I bet.
Well, you may have answered my next question already,
but I was going to ask if there's
an artist or craftsperson whose work you'd
like to amplify and suggest that we all take a look at.
Yeah.
What's her handle?
Saboteuse?
She's on Instagram.
Her name's Sarah Garren, and she's a cowboy bootmaker.
And I met her at a last making workshop in New York
at the Brooklyn [INAUDIBLE].
And her Instagram is S-A-B-O-T-E-U-S-E,
and I think she's just so talented.
And I think she was trained as an architect and a shoemaker
and an artist.
She went to [INAUDIBLE],, and I think she's pretty awesome.
No, it's Saboteuse Bespoke.
If you wouldn't mind putting Keiko and Sarah's
names in the chat while we close out.
Excellent.
Well, thanks so much, Danielle.
What a pleasure to spend time with you and see your studio
and see your tools and hear more about your process.
This is the second time I'm hearing it, seeing it,
but every time, I learn a little bit more.
And like Andy, your tools are really fascinating.
So thank you so much.
And thanks, everybody, for attending today.
We appreciate it.
Please note today's video will be transcribed, so
visit our website to view the video and all past episodes
from Home Edition.
And we also ask that all attendees complete
a quick survey that will help us to evaluate
our online programming and plan for the future.
And yeah, thank you so much for coming today.
We appreciate it.
Hopefully, it was a nice break from your usual schedule today.
So thanks, everybody.
Thank you so much, Danielle.
We appreciate you.
Thanks, everybody, for showing up.
Appreciate it.
Our pleasure.
[MUSIC PLAYING]