Cordwainer Cordwainer A cordwainer () is a shoemaker who makes new shoes from new leather. The cordwainer's trade can be contrasted with the cobbler's trade, according to a tradition in Britain that restricted cobblers to repairing shoes. This usage distinction is not universally observed, as the word "cobbler" is widely used for tradespersons who make or repair shoes. A major British dictionary says that the word "cordwainer" is archaic, "still used in the names of guilds, for example, "the Cordwainers' Company""; but its definition of "cobbler" mentions only mending, reflecting the older distinction. Play 14 of the Chester Cycle was presented
Cordwainer by the guild of corvisors or corvysors. The term "cordwainer" entered English as "cordewaner(e)", from the Anglo-Norman "cordewaner" (from Old French "cordoanier", "-ouanier", "-uennier", etc.), and initially denoted a worker in cordwain or cordovan, the leather historically produced in Moorish Córdoba, Spain in the Middle Ages, as well as, more narrowly, a shoemaker. The earliest attestation in English is a reference to “Randolf se cordewan[ere]”, "ca." 1100. According to the "OED", the term is now considered obsolete except where it persists in the name of a trade-guild or company, or where otherwise employed by trade unions. The terms "cordwainer" and