shoefan
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So, after noodling on what to do next, I settled on trying a 'lazyman' oxford, a.k.a. a gusseted oxford. This style seems to have been most frequently produced by Cleverley, which is also of course famous for their Russian leather recovered from the Metta Catharina ship. I recently acquired a hide of leather which is purported to be tanned using the traditional Russian tannage (birch oil and willow bark), and which is embossed with the same cross-hatching as the Cleverley Russian leather. Note that this leather is modern and is in fact targeted primarily at the upholstery market, not the footwear market, although the Metta Catharina leather was not a shoemaking leather either, but rather a bookbinding leather. So, following are the results. The leather when stretched 'pulled up light,' which means it showed lighter patches where the leather was stretched tightly across the toes, around the bottom, and around the heel counter. You can see this in the pictures, although it looks not nearly so bad in real life. I may go ahead and dye the leather, but I may also decide to leave it as it currently is. This leather and the shoe can be fairly casual, so the variegated finish is kind of interesting. I made these shoes with a beveled waist which turned out pretty well. The sole was left pretty plain, rather than doing a fiddleback. The last was my soft chisel toed last, which I've used for most of my shoes to date. So, here they are:
For my previous effort, see here: http://www.styleforum.net/t/262840
For my previous effort, see here: http://www.styleforum.net/t/262840
