Godfrey Smith - Balmaclellan

Godfrey Smith - The Balmaclellan Clogger

A Gentleman, well worth a visit.

As you pull into the courtyard of the Clog and Shoe Workshop, a clog-shaped sign points you towards a doorway at the far corner of the long building. And once through the door, it's like a scene from a children's movie; shelves and shelves of brightly coloured clogs and shoes interspersed with twinkling lights and various tables and walls of museum artifacts!..local antique clogs, books on clog and shoe making, miniature shoe trinkets.

Leading off the showroom is the workshop itself. Here we find Godfrey standing surrounded by various strange machines and walls of shoe parts, tools and implements. He is a tall, thin man in around his mid-fifties, with tousled greying hair and a short beard. Wearing a leather apron, he peers in intense concentration through glasses perched on the end of his nose at a shoe he is working on.

The machines and equipment in the workshop looks like something out of another era – Singer manual sewing machines, hammers of all sizes, riveting machines, various slightly ominous looking machines bolted to benches with handles and blades for cutting soling, shelves of rainbow coloured dyes and walls and walls of lasts for stretching the leather uppers of shoes into the right shapes and sizes.

An extract from "The Life of a Traditional Clog Maker"
by Sarah Ade

Read the full article here.
http:--www.history.uk.com-history-clog-making-today-life-a-traditiona-
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