Saturday, May 16, 2015

Shameless Self-Promotion: Historical Shoes!

Saturday, May 16, 2015
Isabella reporting,

Since one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about shoes (we say it right up there on our masthead), it seems only fitting to mention a shoe-related exhibition and symposium for you lucky folks in the Northeast.

Fellow shoe-fanatics and nerdy-history-folk: can you say "road trip"?

Cosmopolitan Consumption: New England Shoe Stories 1750-1850 is the name of the exhibition, now on display through June 5 at the Portsmouth, NH Athenaeum. Not only does the exhibition include stunning historical shoes - many from small collections that are seldom on view - but also explores how the owners prized, celebrated, and displayed their shoes as markers of fashion and genteel sensibility. Click here for more information as well as directions.

The symposium connected with the exhibition takes place on Friday evening, May 29 - Saturday, May 30. Experts will discuss historical shoes, their manufacture, and their places in the wearers' lives. While I'm not a scholarly expert, I am definitely a shoe consumer and devotee, and as such on Friday night I'll be speaking on why shoes have always occupied such a much-loved place in the wardrobe. I hope you'll join us, and if you're a TNHG reader, please don't be shy - introduce yourself!

Click here for more information.

UPDATE: Sadly, the symposium has been cancelled. If you have already registered, you will receive a refund check shortly in the mail. However, the exhibition is still running until June 5, and I hope all you shoe-fanatics in the northeast will be able to visit!

Above: The Shoe Peddler, or The Shoemaker's Wife, by Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750. Bavarian State Library.

1 comments:

Chaucerian said...

I got an email from the Portsmouth Historical Society saying that this symposium had been cancelled and they would be returning my check. I just wanted to let others know of this disappointing turn of events.

 
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