The Lost Art of Boot Building

See videos of the Cobbler on Google Video

The Fazzio Family has charmed clients with their talent, because boot making is a lost art. Your feet need care. You stand on them, work with them, walk, run and yet more people neglect their feet. Not all feet are the same, which is why people depend on the Cobbler. Pamper your feet and have your boots fit by a professional who comes from a generation of Cobblers.

Creating a comfortable shoe is one of the World's Oldest Professions, children's stories by Joanne Oppenheim, Left and Right, and Steve Light's Shoemaker Extraordinaire shed light on the folklore and legend surrounding shoe making.

Watching Daryl and Fred work at the Cobbler brings back the magic that has been passed on for generations beyond Italy from where the family came. After all, who taught the Fazzio family in Italy before they immigrated to the United States?

Shoemaking

Traditional shoe making is a handicraft profession. Handicraft , also known as craftwork or simply craft, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or using only simple tools. Usually the term is applied to traditional means of making goods. The individual artisanship of the items is a paramount criterion, such items often have cultural and/or religious significance. Items made by mass production or machines are not handicrafts.

Usually, what distinguishes the term handicraft from the frequently used category arts and crafts is a matter of intent: handicrafted items are intended to be used, worn, et cetera, having a purpose beyond simple decoration. Handicrafts are generally considered more traditional work, created as a necessary part of daily life, while arts and crafts implies more of a hobby pursuit and a demonstration/perfection of a creative technique. In practical terms, the categories have a great deal of overlap.

Shoemaking is a traditional handicraft profession, which has now been largely superseded by industrial manufacture of footwear.

Shoemakers (also known as cobblers or cordwainers) may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, boots, sandals, clogs and moccasins. Such items are generally made of leather, wood, rubber, plastic, jute or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper.

Most shoemakers use a last—made traditionally of iron or wood, but now often of wood—on which to form the shoe. Some lasts are straight, while curved lasts come in pairs: one for left shoes, the other for right shoes.

A cobbler (locally called a mochi) in Mumbai, India

The shoemaking profession makes a number of appearances in popular culture, such as in stories about shoemaker's elves, and the proverb "The shoemaker's children are often shoeless". The patron saint of shoemakers is Saint Crispin.

Some types of ancient and traditionally-made shoes include:

• Furs wrapped around feet, and sandals wrapped over them: used by Romans fighting in northern Europe.
• Clogs: wooden shoes, often filled with straw to warm the feet.
• Mocassins: simple shoes, often without the durability of joined shoes (although different types of leather have different wear characteristics).

The Society for Creative Anachronism offers some advice about making period shoes.

Current crafters may use used car tire tread as a cheap alternative to creating soles.