In August of 2016, I (Larry Hightower) was part of a delegation from MGM Resorts International visiting China.  We were in Chengdu (Sichuan Province in the west of China) August 25-26.  Our guide and my longtime friend and colleague Professor Tangchun Wu arranged a farewell dinner for our delegation at a traditional Sichuan restaurant in downtown Chengdu.  Our dining room was enclosed with antique wooden wall panels that were beautifully carved.  We were served many wonderful dishes.  After dinner, we walked downstairs to an area that included several small shops selling a variety of antiques as well as more typical tourist items.  A cluster of about a dozen straw sandals tied together was hanging in the doorway of one of these shop.  I almost missed it!  I selected two pairs and the shop keeper cut them free of the cluster.  My colleague Wu told me that these sandals were woven locally from plants that grew in the countryside.  These sandals are now China 57 and 58 in the Straw Sandals Project collection.

China 58

China 57

I have a new assistant working behind the scenes of the Straw Sandals Project.  Allison Hillmon is a McNair scholar, students with the goal of obtaining Ph.D. degrees in STEM programs where they are in under-represented groups. She is a senior at the University of Connecticut who became interested in the project and has decided to do her senior thesis on an aspect of it.  She has been re-photographing the entire collection in a more professional manner that will make the sandals more useful.

See the new image below of a pair of French straw sandals on a black felt background.  Soon, the entire collection will be displayed on our website in this way thanks to Allison’s efforts.

My friend Donna Crispin, a fiber artist from Eugene Oregon, took these photos during a recent family trip to Nepal.  Bhaktapur is near the capitol and is a popular city among tourists.  It was great to see these straw sandals among the ‘products’ for sale in the shop.  They are a simpler version of item #NP1 in The Collection, made with essentially the same construction techniques, but no decoration.  NP1 has an interesting history.  It was purchased at a market in New York City and the buyer thought it was from Nepal.  This pretty much confirms it!

Straw shoes for sale in Bhaktapur

Shop in Bhaktapur Nepal

This is the story of two almost identical pairs of woven shoes.  The first pair  was purchased on Ebay in December of 2012.  The owner of Prioritybargains told me that they were found in a flea market in Northwest Oklahoma.  He said that there were no marks on the shoes and so he assumed they may have been produced locally, perhaps by a Native American weaver.  I decided to add them to the Americas category of the Straw Sandals Project Collection as Am3 and when they were described for the Straw Sandals Catalog, they were assigned the tag NAm9.  The important fact to keep in mind is that the provenance of these shoes is unknown.  Then in May of 2013, the second pair was purchased from Etsy store Terrossi  located in the United Kingdom.  The seller told me that these shoes were hand made in Bulgaria (Eastern Europe) at a Fairtrade cooperative.  They were entered into the Collection as Bu1 and they were assigned a tag of EEu3 by the software used in the Straw Sandals Catalog.

How were these shoes described in the Catalog and how did the relationship programs handle them?  The shoes are shown in the image below:

If the same construction methods were used and the same or very similar natural fibers were used to make them, we would expect that they would be treated much the same in the Catalog.  There are two major parts to the process.  The first part is the description of the shoes, done by humans, and the second part is the construction of phylogenetic trees and cluster diagrams, done by computer software.  Decisions are made in the first part that are likely to have subjective components.  My colleague Helen and I sit together and discuss each shoe as we respond to the descriptors on the Catalog Entry page.  We come to agreement on each response.   Our responses are entered into the Catalog’s electronic database and the description in the form of a string of numbers is generated.  These number strings can be processed by the phylogenetic relationship software.  This probably has never been done before for woven footwear.  In past history, a sandal description has been a paragraph or two of text.  For Nam9 (collection item Am3) the description is shown here, each number in the string corresponding to a specific response to each of 38 descriptors:

4111111-91465-91111222233-965-911113233-931.  Here is pair #2, EEu3 (Bu1):

4111111-91165-91111222233-965-911113233-932

(Note that the first descriptor on the Catalog Entry page is not scored so the descriptor string above includes descriptors 2-39)

There are only two descriptors that were scored differently, #11 and #39:

#11.  Decoration

#39.  Overall Sole Shape

For item 11, decoration, we scored the Am3 pair as “Pattern created by main construction technique”, and we scored the Bu1 pair as “None”.  For item 39, overall sole shape, we scored the Am3 pair as “Symmetrical”, and we scored the Bu1 pair as “Asymmetrical”. The decorative difference across the toe box is clear but the sole shape is a more subjective call since wearing the shoes and/or packing them can alter their shapes.   Also the Am3 pair is larger and perhaps more deformable.  However, on second look, we would not change our responses.

What can we conclude about the origin of the pair purchased in NW Oklahoma?  It is certain that these shoes were made by a weaver using the same construction methods as the Bulgarian shoes, and more than that, the same or very similar natural fiber materials were used.  These included three different materials or at least different parts of the same or very similar plant for the warp, weft and selvage.  Microscopic examination of cross sections of the natural fibers could identify the plants used and  we could then determine where these plants live.  Currently we are relying on visual inspection. Thus, it is likely that both pairs of shoes were made in the same geographic region or by weavers originally from the same region.  Based on the information at hand,  it seems most likely to me that both pairs, Bu1 and Am3, were made in or near Bulgaria. I have given Am3 a second tag, Bu2, in the Collection.

We will probably never know how the Am3 shoes ended up in a flea market in NW Oklahoma.  I favor the idea that they were made in Eastern Europe and sent by a relative or friend to someone living in Oklahoma or picked up by a tourist  or military person in Bulgaria and brought home.  Perhaps they were purchased in a store in yet another country. There are other possibilities of course, such as shoes in the style of Am3 being made by Native American weavers in Oklahoma, one of whom may have found his or her way to Eastern Europe with the weaving style eventually reaching a fair trade cooperative in Bulgaria where Bu1 was made.   Perhaps the relationship software will help us decide the most likely  geographic origin and direction of migration!

I will answer the question “How do a couple of differences in how the descriptors are scored affect sandal relationships?” in a future news post.

I am delighted to announce the first pair of woven footwear from India (catalog #I-4), a gift from my colleague Pierre Goloubinoff.  Pierre and his daughter visited this past summer the Leh District of the states of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India.  Pierre purchased these woven shoes from a merchant in the town.  The shoes were woven from hemp and the vamps were made by crochet work using commercially dyed yarn.  This is a particularly interesting part of the world for our studies of weaving and human migration since the region around Leh was a crossroads of the ancient Silk Road thousands of years ago.  The areas in which sandals are still woven extends from Nepal to western Pakistan in the populated valleys at the foot of the Himalayas.  There are additional styles of woven footwear in this region and we hope to add to the Collection from this region in the future.

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

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.

[Show slideshow]