Shoes. An Illustrated History

Description

Shoes: An Illustrated History
Shawcros, Rebecca

Bloomsbury Visual Arts, (12 Nov. 2014)
Hardback 256pp
ISBN 9781472531001
Hardcover: 256 pages
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 26.6 x 2.2 x 24.8 cm

Due to the expensive materials and craftsmanship required, shoes have often been regarded as status symbols; the desire of owners to display their wealth resulting in extreme designs such as the absurdly elongated toes of 14th-century ‘poulaines’. This well-illustrated history of shoe design analyses the many fads of the 20th century and the latest models of contemporary designers as well as investigating footwear styles dating back as far as 3500 BCE – the oldest shoe ever found.

Shoes have always been more than just a practical necessity. They reveal the culture of the times in which they were worn the sexual morals, the social power play, as well as the endless shifting of fashion. Rebecca Shawcross takes the reader on a fascinating journey packed with social and historical detail of making and wearing, of the spectacular and the everyday, of conforming and rebelling.

Lavishly illustrated with a dazzling array of shoes from all over the world, Shoes: An Illustrated History tells the extraordinary story of this ultimate object of desire, from antiquity to the present.

Review

The new book Shoes: An Illustrated History by Rebecca Shawcross charts the many ways we’ve clad our feet, from the oldest known shoes (mocassin-like footwear dating from 3500 BC, and discovered in a cave in Armenia) to the wild styles of today. Along the way, Shawcross explains how high heels became synonymous with feminine sexuality.
The New York Post

This new shoe compendium will raise you to ‘new heights’. Taking the reader on a thrilling shoe odyssey, the work crosses all ground, from the everyday and the emotive, to the extravagant and the spectacular. Erudite and comprehensive, this book sets new standards in exploring the history of footwear.
Peter McNeil, Professor of Design History, UTS, Sydney Distinguished Professor, Academy of Finland at Aalto University

If you love shoes, buy this book! Learn about shoes across the centuries: prehistoric sandals, buskins, slap soles, and shoe designers. An attractive, appealing, informative, and gorgeously illustrated documentation. Rebecca Shawcross knows shoes.
Joanne B. Eicher, Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota, and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion

My usual beef with most shoe survey books produced in the late 20th century is that they pretty much have all the same shoes in them … [Shoes] has SO much more–so many other pairs of footwear that you just don’t see in the majority of other books of this sort out there. This book is beautifully put together and enormously readable/browsable–a great balance of full color images, historical illustrations & engravings, and meaningful yet not dense text … Shawcross gives equal weight to the progression of the history of footwear itself … as she does to recurring iconic styles and innovations/innovators … Ultimately, this is an exciting new book on a subject I adore, and I highly recommend it. — Rachel Pollock La Bricoleuse

About the Author

Rebecca Shawcross is the Shoe Resources Officer at The Shoe Collection, Northampton Museum, UK.