Wooden Clogs

Today I was given a gift of colorful wooden Dutch shoes. They are beautiful with red trim and a scene on the
top. I can't make out if it is a houseboat on the water or a house on green grass. The pointed toe has a red tip and the whole shoe is shellacked to give it a shiny surface. It is a quaint shoe and if my feet were smaller I would try to wear the wooden shoe.


Curious about wooden clogs I went to my favorite place on the Internet to find out more about the shoe. The following is information I found on the Internet:

           There is not a lot of information about the wooden shoes 

           because when the shoe wore out it was used for firewood. 

          The wooden clog originated in Holland. 

          I did find that in the years 1230 and 1271 some of the first 

         wooden shoes were found in Rotterdam, Netherlands. 

         The wooden shoe was used in muddy fields or by factory workers. 

They protected the feet and were easy to clean. 

         A funny item told about how smugglers would carve 

          a backward foot print on the sole of the shoe to confuse the police.

         Alder, Willow and Poplar are some of the woods used to make

         the wooden shoes. The wooden clog made a clicking sound 

         when walking and clog dancing during the Victorian age became popular. 

        Wooden clogs were the forerunners of modern tap dancing shoes. 

        The Netherlands produce over three million shoes a year but most 

        of the shoes are made for souvenirs.

My gift of the wooden clogs sparked my interest in finding out about the shoe. If I had not received the gift I probably would never have researched the interesting wooden clog!

"The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the

cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful,

is the note I seek in painting."

Paul Gauguin