The Art Of Clog Making

This is the craftsmen who gave the clog-making demonstration for us at the Kooijman Wooden Shoe Workshop at Zaanse Schans located about 12 miles (20 km) outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Although originally made by hand, the workshop uses antique machines to make wooden shoes the same way they were made a hundred years ago.

Each clog starts as a block of wood - like a chunk of a 4" x 4" - and finishes as a wearable shoe.  From log to clog.

The Kooijman workshop, located at Zaanse Schans, also houses a wooden clog museum.  They include everything from church clogs to rollerskate clogs to rhinestone-encrusted clogs.  They have one of the largest collections of clogs in the Netherlands.

The machines operate in a similar fashion to the way a key is made - they have one shoe in the machine already, to use as a template - and the machine follows the lines of that shoe to create another one. Then the shoe is hollowed out by another tool on the machine, which the craftsman manipulates to carve out the place for the foot.

The wood used for the shoe is wet - in order to work the wood, it has to be made up of approximately 60% water - and when the demonstration was over the shoemaker held the shoe to his lips and blew into it.  Water dripped from the pores of the wood, showing how much moisture the wood held.

The shoes are then set aside to thoroughly dry before they're hand-painted and sold to tourists looking to walk in the footsteps of the Dutch!

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2018: Beauty Prevails
2017: Approaching The Future Of Space Travel
2016: Hmeep Hmeep!
2015: Spring In The Sky
2014: Power To The Tree
2013: For Mommy
2012: There’s Always Room For La Dolce Vita
2011: Drop It Like It’s Hot
2010: The Art Of Being Tardy
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2005: Sorry, no post on this day. The blog didn’t start until May 2005!