Ladies' old-fashioned shoes

About this book

Ladies' old-fashioned shoes by T. Watson Greig is an illustrated antiquarian monograph produced in the late 19th century (Victorian era). The book surveys historical women’s footwear, pairing plates with concise descriptions to document materials, construction, provenance, and changing fashion.

It opens with a preface about preserving fragile examples, then presents eleven plates that span from a plain black satin shoe attributed to Mary Queen of Scots to richly worked silk, brocade, kid, and cloth-of-gold shoes linked to named wearers (including figures from the reigns of Charles II and Queen Anne) and several unknowns; features noted include diamond or steel buckles, gimp trimming, heart-shaped heels, and heavily stuffed pointed toes of extravagant length. The appendix adds brief remarks on ladies’ self-made shoes and a small Scottish museum inventory, and reprints R. Heath’s expansive essay tracing European footwear from the Valois through the First Empire—high heels, peaked and duck-billed toes, Regency pegs—set against global analogues from India, Persia, China, Albania, Lapland, and North Africa, plus sections on sabots, pattens (including towering Venetian chopines of Eastern origin), sandals ancient and ecclesiastical, moccasins, and the symbolism and utility behind shape and height. A final note mentions Westminster Abbey effigies and pictorial evidence (with Evelyn’s diary) to corroborate period styles.