Still the World’s Oldest Shoe


Meanwhile, in Vindolanda…

They’ve found a panel from a Roman tent.

A new Mindum shoehorn and a middle name

I was recently going for a stroll on the electric Internet and found the Bata Shoe Museum had republished their 1994 title All About Shoes: Footwear Through the Ages. The price was right, so I jumped in and had a look. There, on p57, I found this:

Robart Go To Bed 1585

In this collection of early shoehorns, the one of engraved ivory [sic] one stands out because of its design, the following message is engraved around the edge: This is Robart Go To Beds Shoenhorn Made By The Hands Of Robart Hendart Mindum Anno Domine 1595

The dark tip of the horn shows that it isn’t ivory. So there you go, his middle name was Hendart. Unfortunately the top of the horn is off the page, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see that it had been worn away like on many of the other ones.

I’ve added it to the Shoehorn Spotters’ List updated the catalogue. That makes 21. I’ll do a Wikipedia page on Mindum’s work sometime to see if that flushes out any more.

There are four basic design fields, but unlike most of his other designs, there are no formal divisions between them. The nearest parallel is the treatment of the three goat heads logo on the 1593 Stetteson shoehorn.

Two s-hilt daggers or short swords at the top, to either side of the tip of a large fleur-de-lys with two balls beside its base. Below that, a guilloche, one of his most highly decorated. The third virtual field is populated by a standing male figure in harquebusier armour, armed with a sword. Either side of his head are a rattle, link and lantern, possibly the accoutrements of a nightwatchman.

Could “Go to Bed” be Robert’s nickname based on his late night call? Two indistinct initials either side of his legs, one of them may be “M”. In the fourth location is a tree, with two small figures standing underneath, could this be an allusion to Adam and Eve? Closing the decoration fields is a diagonally hatched band and at the bottom is a 5×5 checkerboard pattern. The hanging hole is in the centre line, and the tip is bent back to form a hook.

I checked that it is still in the Bata Museum Collection, they confirm that it’s still in the collection but otherwise have no information about it and have stopped responding to further requests (like is it on display or inna box?) from an apparently mad person on the Internet. Now all I need is a helpful person to visit, find it and take some decent photographs…

The York Castle Museum shoehorn




York_horn Jane Ayre's Shoehorn 1593





