COMBINED SHOE AND CLOG

ONE of a pair of very elegant shoes and clogs combined, known also as double-soled shoes, made of white kid leather, which appears to have been covered with cream silk damask. The insteps and toes richly embroidered with pale pink or salmon- coloured silk are powdered with seed pearls; the heels retain traces of pink brocade; the latchets are made for tying, and seem from the fragments remaining to have had a fringe and ruching of pearly grey silk, which divided the shoe across the instep, while below the latchets on the instep flap four holes are punched at regular distances probably as a means of affixing a rosette or bow of ribbon. The heels taper downwards and are 2½ inches high, gaining an additional ½ inch by the thickness of the flat heel of the clog, which with the sole, also flat, is of brown leather. The toes, measuring inches across, are flat and square. The total length of the clogs is 10½ inches, the heels being 1¾ inches wide; though the colours of the brocade are faded, the shoes in other respects are in good condition.
Examples of these combined shoes and clogs are to be found in Van Dyck’s portrait pictures.
A similar shoe is in the museum at Northampton, and the Cluny Museum, Paris, has also a specimen of this peculiar foot-gear. Their date is probably of the first half of the seventeenth century.
In the collection of Mrs. Seymour Lucas.