Bottoming
It’s the bottoming of that nice classic pair from my previous 'The beauty of lines' blog post.
That is not to say that other jobs are easy. Last-making is the most esoteric and knowledge-heavy domain. Upper-making is very difficult and you need to have a little bit of an artist in you, if you want to make that job great. All I’m saying is that to become a fantastic bottom maker, you will need to harvest a strong knowledge from the whole range of shoe production processes.
Great example would be here my own experience considering working with other people’s uppers.
It is immediately clear to me if the upper maker knows at least basics of shoemaking.
It takes ten seconds to spot chosen solutions that betray some training and understanding of what the shoemaker needs to get his job done from her/him.
So what is the job? Bottom maker needs to know how to position the upper on the last properly. Needs to gather great skills in lasting job process. Needs to know how to produce and what kind of stiffeners will be optimal for given style of shoes. To prepare an insole, especially in hand-welted construction type, and to do it right is a freaking science. Needs to know the leathers and how to process them, in order to produce a pair of shoes that will last a lifetime and will not start to squeak or fall apart with use. I’m not even going to comment on visuals and imagination here.
Bottoming can and often is a trademark for particular shoemakers.
I’m a lucky guy! To be able to work on all kinds of construction types and all kinds of shoe styles is a bless. For sure, my day job informed my own designs and ideas. It is also super cool that, most of the times, I’m the one who decides how a given pair of shoes will be made, technically. It’s a dream job. Truly.
Is bottom maker basically a shoemaker, though? Well, it depends on your personal view point.
To me, shoemaking is a job of the craftsman who can do last-making, who can design and produce the uppers and who is also a bottom maker.
What’s my favorite bottom construction type? I like to do hand-welted forefoot part, sporting hand-sewn sole at 8 spi. Personally, I don’t see a good reason to go denser than 10 spi. We are talking about 2.5 mm kind of space between holes. That’s a robust sewing. It’s crazy to put stitches every 1.5 mm or so, in my humble opinion.
For waist, my favorite is pegged construction. It allows for super slim profiles. It looks cool, if you know what you’re doing. It’s strong and sound enough.
For the heels, I absolutely love my lifted top line profile. When the heel stack gently grabs and holds the back of the shoe - that’s what I like. That smooth transition between the two, pumps my blood a little bit faster. More and more, I appreciate square, manly heels nowadays over anything else.
And that’s how I roll. This is only a prototype work, so it’s not even to the best of my abilities, but I think it’s already pretty clear here. My prototypes looks better than production pairs that I do for other companies. This is Brunon Bierżeniuk!