The Art of the Shoe (Magnus Collection) (Magnus Series) - Hardcover

Aside from noticing a shoe for its comfort or elegance, people rarely take interest in this necessary object of daily life. However, the shoe is considerable in the history of civilisation and art. Made of the most diverse materials, from leather to wood, from cloth to straw, whether plain or ornamented, the shoe, by its form and decoration, becomes an object of art. If the shape is sometimes more functional than aesthetic - but not always, and one could explain many absurd forms - the design of the cloth, the embroidery, the inlays, the choice of colours, everything always closely reveal the artistic characteristics of their native country. The essential interest comes from that which it is not; weapons or musical instruments are reserved for a caste or a determined social group, carpets are the products of only one or two civilisations, it does not stand up as a sumptuous object of the rich or a folkloric object of the poor. The shoe has been used from the bottom to the top of the social ladder, by all the individuals of any given group, from group to group, by the entire world.