Cordwainer recovered from discarded or repaired shoes. Today, many makers of bespoke shoes will also repair their own work, but shoe repairers are not normally in a position to manufacture new footwear. In London, the occupation of cordwainer was historically controlled by the guild of the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers. They were granted a royal charter of incorporation in 1439, but had received their first ordinance in 1272. The ward of the City of London named Cordwainer is historically where most cordwainers lived and worked. Until 2000, a Cordwainers' Technical College existed in London. For over a hundred years, the College
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