A working shop that demonstrates shoemaking and the general skills of leatherworking, the shop’s size and contents are typical and authentic. One sees in it numerous boots and shoes in various stages of construction, a full set of lasts, other articles of leather, including belts, mugs, and black jacks, and an assortment of knives, awls, and other leatherworking tools of the eighteenth century.

In contrast to this small shop in Williamsburg, the “Shoe Factory” operated by John Wilson, George’s predecessor in Norfolk, included these items presumably found there by the appraisers of his estate:

The “tax” in this case is easy to evade by changing it to tacks. The “sise stick” was almost certainly the same sort of device that is used in shoe stores today to measure the size of the customer’s foot. But what really strikes one about this inventory is the magnitude of the operation it reveals. With an indicated seventeen workers, it was doubtless one of the few mass-production factories colonial Virginia could boast.

The ratio of boots to shoes for men—6 to 103 pairs—seems out of line for Virginia where, as one observer wrote, “even the most indigent person has his saddle-horse, which he rides to every place, and on every occasion.” Virginians being “excessively fond of horses,” one would expect them to have worn boots most of the time, and this expectation would seem to be corroborated by Robert Gilbert’s repeated advertisements for the services of a journeyman bootmaker. The evidence indicates that in the latter part of the century boots appear to have sold better than shoes.

Boots (sometimes listed as “ffrench falls”) as well as shoes for men, women, and children were imported from England—and from New England—as well as being made in the colony. Among the London makers, Didsbury & Co. enjoyed first preference for orders sent from Virginia and paid for with shipments of tobacco. The wives and daughters of planters, in particular, preferred to wait six months or a year for the arrival of fashionable shoes from London rather than buy what the local shoemaker offered, or they sometimes patronized the milliner for “stuff” shoes.

A good shoemaker could average two pairs of shoes, welted, turned, or stitched in a twelve-hour working day. In any shoe the sole would be heaviest cow or ox hide, cut from that part of the hide over the animal’s hind quarters called the “bend.” Uppers would usually be of calfskin, sometimes of goat, sheep, or dogskin. Women’s shoes with leather soles very often had uppers of fabric, such as calimanco, ticking, silk, damask, satin, or poplin.

Black was the color of men’s shoes, although an occasional example might be in color, especially the heels. For women’s leather shoes, red, white, blue, green, or purple prevailed. Children’s footwear was made in bright colors or black. Lacing, apparently the usual fastening method in the seventeenth century, gradually gave way in the eighteenth to straps and buckles, the latter tending to become larger and fancier as time passed. Buckles of brass and steel served for everyday wear, silver and paste for dress-up occasions. The Geddy family in Williamsburg made copper alloy buckles as good as could be had from London, while silversmith John Coke made them in gold. Ties, however, did not lose out completely.

Pointed toes held first place in fashion for both men’s and women’s shoes. Again, this does not mean that round- or square-toed shoes were not made; on the contrary, they were not uncommon on the feet of those persons who put other considerations before style. But style was a potent governor for the well-to-do among colonial Virginians, who {...}

Both men’s and women’s shoes, as well as children’s and slaves’ shoes—, were made on straight lasts. That is, shape and construction were the same for left and right shoe, and either one of a pair could be worn on either foot. This situation resulted not from some primitive crudeness or ineptitude on the part of colonial cordwainers, who could and if called upon did make paired left-and-right shoes. Rather, it embodied an aesthetic preference. Symmetrical shoes pleased the eighteenth-century eye more in themselves and left a more pleasing pattern of tracks than did unsymmetrical shoes.

If that seems a curious judgment, just remember that your own preference for paired shoes would strike your style-conscious colonial forebears as quite unthinkable.