[Ansteorra] period shoe polish

[David J. Hughes]

High gloss in footwear seems to be an 18th century development.A low gloss material, used early , was dubbin,a mixture of wax, oil and tallow.Mostly used to soften, condition and waterproof leather, the slight gloss is just a side benefit.The more Beeswax in the dubbin, apparently, the higher the gloss, which makes sense, but the harder it is to apply. Easiest to find analogues are the various Leather Balms or Hide Rejuvenator/Restorer, but none of these have much wax. Check Wikipedia for  'Dubbin', there's a chain of links off it, might find a home recipe David Gallowglass  

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
To: SCA-Arts-Sciences maillist <artssciences at lists.gallowglass.org>, "Inc. Kingdom of Ansteorra - SCA" <ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: [Ansteorra] period shoe polish
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 23:09:42 -0500

Does anyone know whether they used such a thing as shoe polish in period to refresh scuffed shoes?

I have a pair of period style shoes that were made, I believe, in a modern third-world country. They are made of a fairly shiny, brown pebbled finish leather. After a number of SCA events, the toes were getting roughed up and losing their color and there were some scuff marks on the heals.

I ended up using a modern liquid shoe polish from a bottle since that is what I had on hand. However, while the scuff marks are now brown again, they aren't as shiny as the rest of the leather.  These are very soft leather shoes, so I'm not sure that a paste wax would have made any difference or not.

I find it hard to believe that our period forebears wouldn't have done something to refresh the looks of their shoes. However, maybe the rich just got new shoes and the poor couldn't afford to bother?

Thanks,
   Stefan

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****






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