User:Amuckart/sandbox/Turnshoe

Not to be confused with turnsole.

A shoemaker making turnshoes at the Roscheider Hof Open Air Museum

A turnshoe or turn shoe is a shoe made inside out and then turned right-side-out for wear. This construction protects the thread in the seams particularly the seam between the upper and sole.

History

Cross section through the heel of an accurate modern reproduction of a 14th century turnshoe made using tools and techniques accurate to the 14th century, but in modern vegetable tanned leather. The cut ends of threads are visible in the edges of the leather.

Turned construction was the primary mode of shoe construction in Europe for around 800 years until it was supplanted by lasted and welted construction for most outdoor footwear in the late 15th/early 16th century.

Prior to the advent of turned construction shoes were made from a single piece of leather wrapped up around the foot forming both the sole and upper. The oldest leather shoe known to archaeology, the Areni-1 shoe, is a simple shoe of this type. Roman caligae were complex examples of this construction. Turned construction appeared in Europe in around the

Even after non-turned welted construction became the norm, some indoor shoes and slippers were made as turnshoes and the technique is still used today in the making of specialist dance shoes, most notably ballet slippers.

Medieval Turnshoes

In the late early and the high medieval ages, turnshoes mostly consisted of one sole (cowhide or bovinae) and one piece of vamp (goat or cowhide or caprinae/bovinae).

Shoes where the upper and sole are a single piece of leather, called carbatines (after the Roman carbatinae), were also usually closed inside out and turned, but there are academic arguments in favour of using the term "turnshoe" to refer shoes with a separate sole and maintaining a terminological distinction between those and other constructions.

External links

• Footwear of the Middle Ages