Author Archives: Joan

Announcing the Launch of the Straw Sandals On-line Catalog

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I am pleased to announce the launch of the Straw Sandals Catalog at www.strawsandalscatalog.org. In collaboration with my old friend and colleague Barry Hall, we have constructed an on-line catalog of hand-crafted footwear.  I will be posting more about this catalog in the coming days but simply stated, this catalog will allow anyone interested and connected to the internet to describe an item of hand-crafted, plant fiber footwear using a standardized response form and submit the description.  The item will receive a unique catalog designation and the description will be publicly available.  The initial entries into the catalog have been selected from the Straw Sandals Project collection.  In future, we hope that the site will be used by academic scholars, museum staff, students and collectors.

The first entry is the Japanese Warazori J13 shown below:

In the catalog, this item has been described based on responses to 38 characters all of which have been assigned character states to standardize responses.  To give you a sense of a description done in this manner, I have listed the description of J13 below:

Catalog ID: JpK1
Timestamp: 3/30/2012
Source and ID: Straw Sandals Project item J13

Style: Sandal attached to foot by toe thong(s) only (flip-flop)

Attachment of Sole to Vamp (Upper): Continuous

Sole Front Toe-loops: 0

Sole Side-toe loops: 0

Sole mid-sole loops: 0

Sole Side Heel-loops: 0

Sole Back Heel- loops: 0

Tie-system technique: Does not apply (no tie-system used)

Attached decorative element: None

Decoration: Pattern created by main construction technique

Sole Warp or Passive Element: Coarse, twisted, rounded element

Sole Weft or Active Element: Coarse, twisted, rounded element

Sole Bundle: Does not apply (no bundle used)

Sole warp or passive element yarn ply: 3 ply

Sole warp or passive element yarn twist: Z-twist

Sole weft or active element yarn ply: 2 ply

Sole weft or active element yarn twist: S-twist

Sole front edge finishing technique (selvage): Complex (contain added elements)

Sole back edge finishing technique (selvage): Complex (contain added elements)

Sole side edge finishing technique (selvage): Simple (produced from elements already in the sole)

Sole construction technique: 1 by 1 weft faced plainweave (warps and wefts used)

Sole warp material: Spun fibers

Sole weft material: Straw or grass

Sole solid (non-woven) material: Does not apply (sole not made of solid material)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) Warp or Passive Element: Does not apply (no warp used)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) Weft or Active Element: Coarse, twisted, rounded element

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) Bundle: Does not apply (no bundle used)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) warp or passive element yarn ply: Does not apply (no warp used)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) warp or passive element yarn twist: Does not apply (no warp used)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) weft or active element yarn ply: 2 ply

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) weft or active element yarn twist: Z-twist

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) edge finishing technique (selvage): Complex (contain added elements)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) construction technique: Non-woven vamp

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) warp material: Does not apply (Vamp made of solid material)

Upper (Vamp + Quarter) weft material: Cloth

Upper solid (non-woven) material: Does not apply (Vamp not made of solid material)

Structure of Upper: Vamp only

Overall Sole Shape: Symmetrical

Additional Information: Item J13 is a contemporary Warazori. The basic construction method is ancient and only straw was used. Here in a more modern rendition, cloth is used to start the flip-flop and end the flip-flop which is constructed from toe to heel. The cloth is wrapped around the four nylon warp elements to make a strong toe and heel part of the sole. In the classic construction, straw is used in place of cloth in the sole and straw is also used to construct the vamp.

There are 38 characters and the really neat thing about this approach is that the responses can be converted into a set of numbers, essentially a code that can be used by computer programs (algorithms) to organize and compare the descriptions in various ways.  More on this later but here is the code for Warazori J13:

The code for describing this specimen is 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -9 1 4 5 5 -9 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 1 2 -9 -9 5 -9 -9 -9 2 3 3 1 -9 6 -9 1 1

Aztec Art in Japan

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Occasionally I search Ebay and Etsy for straw shoes and sandals.  Recently I found a store named AztecArt on Etsy that offered a pair of straw sandals that looked very interesting.  The overall design was unlike any I had seen from Japan and yet the soles were very similar to sandals from Japan in The Collection.  The shop owner and artistic creator is Ixtlixochitl White Hawk.  I learned from Ixtli’s profile that she was born in Mexico City into a family that traces their ancestry to the ancient Aztecs.  Ixtli made these sandals while living in Misawa-shi, Aomori Prefecture, Japan.  She values cultural traditions and crafts and is a member of the Tloke Nahuake Traditional Aztec Dancers:

On her profile page she wrote “My work centers in my Aztec roots, creating pieces in traditional and contemporary styles. All pieces are hand crafted with care and quality materials using semi-precious stones, feathers, leather and other natural elements. My pieces are unique,…”  Indeed the sandals that I obtained from Ixtli’s store reflect her creative philosophy and provide an excellent example of how different traditions can combine to allow the evolution of sandal design.  I believe that these sandals show both Japanese and Amerindian cultural influences.  Therefore, I entered them into the Japan Gallery as J12a,b and started a new gallery, Americas, with their entry Am1a,b.  The sandals from AztecArt are shown below (upper image) along with an image of J10 (lower image), sandals from the Japan Gallery:

Note the similarities in the design and construction of the soles.  The vamp of the AztecArt sandal has been woven with a basket weave pattern and bright colored straw strands were added, which is rarely seen in Japanese sandals.  If color is used, it is added by cloth strips woven into the sandals or used as thongs.  I have seen antique sandals made by the Anasazi Indians of the southwestern United States that employed this weave.  For example, I took the photograph below of a sandal dated to 4000 B.C.E. at the University of Utah Museum of Natural History:

The AztecArt sandals were created for use as wall art or home décor.  Ixtli suggested hanging them in the home “for good luck and safe travels”.  Here is another example of  a possible Japanese influence.  Kokeshi are Japanese dolls handmade from wood in a characteristic shape.  A pair of Kokeshi placed on tiny Waraji sandals represents the spirit of travel with a friend or partner to enhance the pleasure of the experience.  The image below is from the Collection (Mis2, 3, 4):

The AztecArt woven sandals shown as home decor below:

Contemporary designers may help save an ancient craft

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A new direction for the Straw Sandals Project is the collection of representative contemporary shoes and sandals that use woven components.  This is happening in both lower and high-end brands.  Our first contemporary entry into the collection is C25, a pair of high heel raffia-covered sandals made in China by Rocket Dog.  Shoes by this brand are priced to be broadly affordable and the designs appeal to younger women.  Contemporary designers use mixed material construction and the various materials are typically produced in different countries, so the shoe industry is truly a global enterprise. Thus, it is more appropriate to say that a shoe is assembled in a particular country rather than made there.  The woven material covering these sandals is raffia straw.  The straw may have been produced from Raphia palms grown in Madagascar, East Africa, or even the Philippines.  It may have been woven in the country of origin or the fibers may have been shipped to China for weaving.  Rocket Dog likely purchased the woven raffia cloth for assembly of these shoes.  It is very difficult to sort out the supply lines and assembly strategy that various companies use.  Woven fibers are combined with leather such as the foot bed used here and synthetic materials such as the soles of these sandals.  The sole form may be either wood or synthetic material.  The woven material is an environmental friendly renewable resource that gives workers in developing countries jobs and holds down the cost of the item.  In a way this may help preserve the ancient weaving crafts, so long as the weaving is done by hand and not by machine.

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A Carved Wood and Rafia Shoe made in the Philippines

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It is always fun to welcome a shoe from a different country to the Collection.  I found these in the Etsy on-line store Hillbillyfilly.  They were described as “Vintage 40s WWII exotic carved wooden platform dragon peep toe ankle strap high heel shoes.”  All true!  To expand a bit on this description, shoes like these were favorites among servicemen stationed in the Philippines during the Second World War who bought them as souvenirs for the gals back home.  A sailor stationed there brought this pair home, and I did notice that they were shipped to me from San Diego, a U.S. Navy town then and now.  Typically the wooden sole was carved, usually with a scene from a rural village and painted in bright colors.  This pair has a finely carved and varnished dragon on each side of the shoe, holding up the heel.  The vamp is made of two layers of woven material.  The outer layer is an open weave of raffia fibers.  These cover a tightly woven layer of raffia fabric, dyed a burnt orange color.  The ankle ties are constructed the same way.  The vamp is attached to the wooden sole with metal tacks.  The bottom of the sole is stamped with the maker, Tesoro’s of Manila (established in 1945).  The style is a peep toe wedge, very popular in the 1940’s in the U.S. and England.  It was likely made primarily for export.

Shoes and sandals constructed at least in part with raffia fibers are a growing part of the Collection.  The image below shows dried raffia fibers that were grown in Madagascar and packaged in Ohio.  I bought it from an Ebay store (Kurlykatescorner).

Photo above by maryan54, Webshots, bundles of raffia fibers being unloaded, Unisan, Quezin, Philippines.  In the Philippines the palm is called the Buri Plant (Raphia farinifera) and is the source of two fibers, raffia and buntal.

These fibers are obtained from Raffia palms with most species native to tropical Africa, particularly Madagascar.  One species occurs in Central and South America as well.  The leaves of one species grow to 25 meters long and 3 meters wide.  The fibers are made from the membrane on the obverse side of the leaf (photo below by Andrew Massyn, Wikimedia Commons, Raphia australis, Cape Town, S.A.)

Raffia fibers are remarkably versatile.  They can be dyed and woven into textiles that resemble cotton cloth.  These fibers have been used to make shoes and sandals since ancient times such as the Moroccan shoes (collection item Mor1) below, the colorful style of which goes back over 1000 years.

Contemporary designers of both high end and inexpensive shoes and sandals continue to value the flexibility of materials made of raffia and continue to use them along with leather, cloth, wood and man-made materials.  The Rocket Dog platform sandals shown below, purchased from the Ebay shop Jazcifaldi, were made in China. They provide a nice example of the use of raffia fibers in an inexpensive contemporary shoe.

Curator Lu visits The Collection

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This past week (4/28/2011), I welcomed Ruixing Lu, Founding Curator of the Wuxi Chinese Blue Calico Museum, along with his wife Xiaoxuan Ji.  His daughter Lu Qi, who is studying financial mathematics, arranged our meeting at the University of Connecticut.  Curator Lu has contributed many of the shoes and sandals from Japan and China.  He found skilled weavers to make some of the China sandals specifically for the collection.  This is very special because it is clear proof that the skills of straw weaving of sandals still exist in China.

Here Ruixing and I are studying a woven shoe for bound feet (item C16) with Lu Qi acting as our translator.  I was particularly interested in his thoughts about this shoe since I was very surprised to find straw shoes made for bound feet in China.  In my mind I associated foot binding with the wealthy and privileged classes and with their access to the finest cloth and embroidery materials.  I think of straw shoes and sandals as footwear of the common people.  Ruixing carefully turned a shoe in his hands and felt its surfaces.  First he announced that these shoes are well over 100 years old, which confirms the seller’s information.  Then, he said that these shoes are worn and tell a story about their owner, who was a member of a wealthy family.  He  reached this conclusion based on the variety of materials that were used to create multiple layers and from the very fine weaving of the surface layer, which took many hours to complete.  I asked for his thoughts on why these shoes were much larger than the shoes for the golden lotus foot at roughly half the length of these.  He suggested that C16 possibly was made for a young girl in an early stage of binding and that this size shoe could accommodate a heavily bound foot in this transitional stage.  Finally, he looked directly into my eyes and said that if I were to divide my collection into three levels of quality and significance, this shoe would be in the top level.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of collecting is that it leads one in unexpected directions.  At least to this collector, straw shoe C16 represents a surprising link between the handicraft of straw weaving and the institution of foot binding, which existed in some form for roughly a thousand years in China, ending during the first half of the twentieth century.  This cries out for deeper study!

Introducing a new Gallery

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There is a new  gallery in the About>Present section of the website.  It is composed of images taken by Philip and Elizabeth Hooper during a visit in 2010 to the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. Petersberg.  It shows Russian peasants in traditional dress wearing straw sandals made from the inner bark of  birch trees.  The collection contains examples of these kinds of woven shoes from Russia (items R1 and R2) and Finland (items F1 and F2).  The skills to obtain the raw materials and to craft these shoes have migrated to the United States along with immigrants from Scandinavian countries, a more recent example of human migrations spreading handicrafts.  Elizabeth also created three galleries of contemporary  Russians wearing their shoes and boots.  It is interesting to see how footwear continues to evolve while at the same time preserving ancient accents and patterns.  I have included these URLs below.  Enjoy the slides accompanied by Russian music and lighthearted commentary:

http://russiatrek2010.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/shoespart-i/

http://russiatrek2010.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/shoes-part-2-2/

http://russiatrek2010.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/shoes-final-2/

Miniature Okobo

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Okobo are high wooden clogs worn primarily by Maiko (apprentice Geisha).  The pretty miniatures recently entered in the collection as M5 were purchased on Ebay.  The seller purchased them from an estate sale in Hong Kong.  I saw Maiko dressed for entertaining wearing them in Kyoto.  Like the J8 getas in the collection, full sized Okobo may have a woven straw footpad and may be natural wood or covered with silk cloth.  They have a hollow cavity carved into the sole and it makes a pleasant sound when the Maiko walks in them . The sound certainly announces her approach.  I have read that Okobos are sometimes called Pokkuri or Koppori, the verbalizing of which has a similar sound to the one created by walking in them.  But Pokkuri and Koppori are more ornate and are worn by young girls on shichi-go-san (7-5-3), a celebration of these ages.  Okobo are usually natural wood.   The level of apprenticeship of the Maiko is indicated by the color of the straps on her Okobo. Beginners wear red straps and more  experienced Maikos wear pink straps. Geishas wear geta and zori. (click on the thumbs below to see full images)

Listen for the sound of the Okobo as the Miako walks in the cobblestone street at Gion Corner in Kyoto in the video clip at Menu item About -> Resources ->Videos.

The Kokeshi Travelers

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Any one of the three sets of paired Kokeshi from Japan in the Miscellany section of The Collection (Mis2, 3 and 4) could serve as a logo for the theme of our website, straw sandals and human migration!   Kokeshi are Japanese dolls handmade from wood in a characteristic shape.  Carvers use a variety of woods including cherry for darkness, dogwood for soft qualities and Japanese maple usually seasoned for several years.  There are no limbs, just a simple trunk with an enlarged head with several lines painted on for facial features.  The story goes that these dolls originated in northeast Japan during the middle Edo period (1600-1868) and were produced for sale to visitors to the hot springs.  In the pieces shown below, a pair of Kokeshi have been placed on straw sandals (Waraji) to represent the spirit of travel.  They are based on an ancient Japanese saying that traveling together with a friend or partner increases the pleasure of the travel experience.

photo by Larry Hightower

Mingei Folk Art

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The latest addition (J11) to the Japan Gallery is not a straw sandal but rather a wooden mold for making straw slippers.  At least, that is how this mold was used originally in the late 1800s as a household tool.  Now it hangs on the wall of my study, having arrived with a hand rubbed coating, possibly oil and varnish, and a leather tie for attaching the mold to a wall hanger.  It is now a Mingei folk art object.  Mingei, literally folk art, refers to a movement founded by Yanagi Soetsu in the 1920s.  There are two museums that include Mingei art, the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum and the Mingei International Museum, located in Tokyo and San Diego CA, respectively.  Intially I thought that it would be relatively simple to describe  this piece, but then I discovered that there is a Mingei Theory or philosophy that became entwined in Japanese imperialism and colonialism.  There are numerous interpretations both historical and political about the movement that go far beyond the simple crafting of straw slippers.  These will take a while to research and sort out.   Meanwhile, as wall art the mold, although wonderful on its own, now provides a perfect shelf for another recent addition to the collection.  See the news story  “The Kokeshi Travelers”.

Japanese Sandals in The Philippines: Mystery, Love and Future Fame

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Two recent acquisitions J9 and J10 came with an interesting story.  Based on information from the seller, Kathryn Adams, my research and examination of the sandals, here are my conclusions about the path of these sandals:

William Barre and his wife Cora Adams Barre probably obtained the sandals during a trip to Japan in the early 1900s.  They brought these Japanese sandals with them upon their return home to Manila, The Philippines. The sandals were passed to Cora’s younger sister Florence, known in the family as Floss.  Sometime after the family returned to Ohio in late 1907, the shoes passed from Florence to her brother J.Q. Adams.  His granddaughter Kathryn is the seller.  It is unusual for antique straw sandals to be traceable for over 100 years.

The sandals arrived with several interesting side stories.  William Barre was a young banker from Nebraska who became involved in the Spanish American War and ended up in Manila.  Because of his financial experience and contacts, he became Assistant Comptroller and then Comptroller of The Philippines.  Kathryn contributed an old photograph of Cora Adams Barre dressed in a Japanese kimono and performing a tea ceremony, evidence of a visit to Japan.  Kathryn told me a great story about Floss and a young U.S. Army Lieutenant named Douglas MacArthur.  The family summered in the town of Bagio in the mountains above Manila.  As the summer heat subsided, the sisters rode horses side saddle during their return home to Manila.  Floss met MacArthur at a dance at the Army-Navy Club.  Several days later, Lieutenant MacArthur arrived at their home at lunchtime on horseback in a driving tropical rain.  He presented his card to the house boys, Pedro and Amelio, but apparently they did not recognize him as a friend of the family, and he was not invited in.  However, Douglas and Floss eventually began dating.  In 1904, Lieutenant MacArthur was shipped back to the U.S.   During the Pacific transit, he wrote letters and a diary to Floss.  And yes, this is the same Douglas MacArthur who rose to the rank of General of the Army (U.S.) and who was awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign.  These materials are now housed in the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, as part of the Douglas MacArthur collection.  (Click on image to enlarge: Left, Cora Adams Barre; Middle, J9; Right, J10)