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Project #3: Historical Shoes Re-soled / Re-soul CONSTRUCTIONS




From footwear > to High Fashion
Shoes have been around for tens of thousands of years. 
  • 40,000 BCE – First archeological evidence of protective foot covering found in Ice Age settlements
  • Some other earliest shoes we have discovered were sandals from Ancient Egypt 
  • 4,000 BCE seems to be the first recorded text  mentioning of shoes as “flexible pieces of leather” came from Ancient Egypt
  • 3,627 BCE Archeologist found the earliest known leather shoe near one of the cave  dwellings in Armenia


Fashion history changes through time and culture depending on a group’s fashion aesthetic, their tendencies and their use.  

Footwear fashion can be divided into the main world history eras:
Prehistory (2,5 million BCE – 1250 BCE)  
BCE = Before the Common Era
Antiquity (1250 BCE – 476)
The Middle Ages (476 – 1453 CE)  
CE = Common Era
Early Modern Times (1453 – 1918)
Modern Times (1918 - to today) 
In this assignment you will research a specific shoe from world history.  Please go to the link from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK for loads of information > https://www.vam.ac.uk/shoestimeline

Your design may be from fashion history or one that has just hit the market yesterday!


Helpful links


Process
1 Sketchbook info
You will need to do some fun research! For our next class, you need to bring in your selection from the V&A Museum’s Collection, color or B&W.   
Research: Cultural area / time period / use / materials > note your bibliographical source! 

2
You will analyze the footwear through numerous drawings in your sketchbooks (6)
You need to scale up your shoe to at least 2x the original size worn by the human
Break down the profiles (side views) into large planar shapes in your selected material
You may wish to use paper pattern pieces to do this (Brown Kraft paper on rolls)
Understand the forms front and back, it’s thorough construction.
Begin to construct your cardboard shoe gluing together with hot glue (be extremely careful!)

3
You need to create the shoe’s anatomy first, prior to the FUN part!
Consider the exterior membrane of the original shoe from the V&A Collection
You will translate this exterior design in found materials that make visual sense to the original
Experiment with the covering materials
You may wish to paper mache them onto the shoe’s structure
Experiment with every possibility your materials may offer you
You may wish to change the shoes color, pattern, etc. which is totally a-okay
4
You will present your shoe alongside your researched text about it.
Who made it?  Why ?  Time Period ?  Materials ?  etc.  (minimum 2 paragraphs)


 DUE: OCT 1st >> Prepare yourselves for our Critique:
 By SUNDAY SEPT 29th at 9 PM, send me an electronic with the following information:
  1. Your name on the upper right corner.
  2. An image of the original shoe from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London
  3. The URL link to the shoe on line
  4. Make sure you include information of the shoe - the date, what it the shoe was used for, by whom, the materials of the actual shoe
  5. Make sure you add any other pertinent information you discovered.
  6. Make sure you put “ xxxx “ around text that is copied from another source.
  7. On the lower edge list the materials you have used in creating your shoe.
  • Spell check always!

I will compile the information onto card stock, in color to go along with the shoe you have created. 
I will bring these next Tuesday to class for our critique together.
Your research card lables will be shown along side your completed shoe.

At the critique, make sure you are ready to speak about the following 8 talking points, placing the information into your sketchbooks:
  1. The shoe you selected from the V&A Museum, a bit of history about it.
  2. How you translated the original into cardboard noting the selection of materials you chose and why
  3. Problems you ran into during construction
  4. How did you solve the problems?
  5. What details have you chosen to include?
  6. Visually, how is the overall shoe you’ve created effective? 
  7. How could you improve the constructed shoe?
  8. What did you learn?

Materials
Sculpt shoes form cardboard, paper Mache, fabric, etc.
Hot Glue gun
Other found materials 


















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