Shoemaking

Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or craftsmanship.

Shoemakers 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.

Trades that engage in shoemaking have included the cordwainer's and cobbler's trades. Today shoes are often made on a factory basis rather than a craft basis.

History

Traditional methods

For most of history, shoemaking has been a handicraft, limited to time consuming manufacture by hand. Traditional shoemakers used more than 15 different techniques of making shoes. Some of these were: pegged construction, English welted (machine-made versions are referred to as "Goodyear welted" after the inventor of the technique), goyser welted, Norwegian, stitchdown, turnout, German sewn, moccasin, bolognese stitched, and blake-stitched.

The Art

The Art (sometimes stylised as THEART) are an Australian Alternative Rock band based in Sydney. They began performing under the name The Follow in 2004. Tasmanian band leader Azaria Byrne was known as an unsuccessful contestant on the reality television series Popstars.

Early highlights for the band's career have been supporting successful bands such as the Pixies, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth and Thirty Seconds to Mars as late as 2010, however this was marred by the crowd booing and calls to "get off the stage".

As band leader Azaria Byrne enters middle age success has so far eluded him despite media attention resulting from his being cuckolded by the even older fading celebrity Bill Corgan.

The other band members have all been described as "dull" but this could also be a result of the attention seeking behavior of their singer.

Members

References