How Dutch Clog Makers Are Keeping An 850-Year-Old Tradition Alive | Still Standing

It takes half a day and a solid block of wood to carve just one pair of

tradition

al Dutch or Clin

clog

s. Farmers and factory workers throughout the Netherlands have worn these wooden shoes for over 800

year

s. Every town has a watch maker like a bakery or a butcher, but today there are only 10 left in the entire country. By the early 1900s, machines largely replaced manual carvers and then wearing wooden

clog

s fell out of fashion. Today, Clins are sold primarily as souvenirs, leaving clog

makers

and painters to juggle multiple businesses or invent an entirely new type. of art to stay afloat Martin Dykman recreated this Dutch masterpiece with more than 13,000 mini clogs.

We visited the Netherlands to see how one of the oldest groups in the sector is

still

standing

. A pair of clogs starts with a block of new willow or poplar wood. tree does not weigh much when dried when you have hard wood it is also heavy so when it is finished it should be like this you have a lot of kilos on your foot Martin make sure to avoid knots in the wood like this A new branch is forming so it is not good make a hole in the shoe, then cut the rough shape of a shoe.

Martin is a fourth-generation clog maker and

still

uses the ax his father gave him when he was 12

year

s old. The handle is curved to help protect your hand from it. When it's straight, it will cut your fingers, but you still have to be careful. If you cut too much, you will have to start over. Has that ever happened to you? Yes, many times, so you have to do it. practice a lot in the old days that were schools, it takes you seven years to learn it. The Clin schools no longer exist, so Martin learned everything from his father.

The Dyan family has been carving clogs in the town of Lenek for over 100 years. Martin took over the family business in 1997 today he lives behind his workshop and has clogs everywhere he needs three four pairs in a year Martin shapes the shoe on a wooden bench that his father built more than 50 years ago, the blade long at the top, it is called palmis and is also about half a century old. He begins by carving the outside of the clog, peeling off slice after slice. The two pieces must be the same. Oh, this one is too high.

This is a bit. Yes, there are more pointy ones, I have to start again. Yes. Martin can now begin to excavate the inside of the shoe starting with two holes. All of these bucket drills he inherited are over 80 years old. This one is called the Lepel boar and works like a scoop of ice cream. He uses this larger Lepel boar for carving. the space between the two starting holes can be seen to be very intense, slowly work your way to the toe removing rosettes of wood with each turn, check the length each step of the way with this old school rule, Martin says they used to use the shoe

makers

.

They measure the clogs with their thumbs, but Napoleon invented centimeters and a question of wood at that time and they have to exceed 2 cm today he is working on a pair for a child the size should be 20 20 cm next size the toe and the arch, this step, he says, is the longest when you have a small stone in your shoes, you feel it, so yes, you have to soften it. Finally, he forms the heel, it measures approximately 3 and 1 12 cm high, a final measurement and he can begin to smooth the outside of the shoe, so this is the nice place.

Martin says he cuts 65% of the original piece of wood. He burns the remains to dry his newly carved clogs. Each master clog maker engraves a signature-like design. This is my grandfather's design, yes, I keep it that

alive

. It is difficult to follow the exact history of wooden clogs because most of them rotted or were used as firewood. The oldest wooden shoe found in the Netherlands dates back to the 13th century and iterations were found throughout Europe. but its popularity in the Netherlands was that the more durable wood was cheap and easy to find and protected workers' feet from sharp objects or the footprints of a cow.

The clogs were also waterproof, important for a shoe used for trudging through the wet, muddy landscapes of the Netherlands. By the 16th century, everyone from farmers and fishermen to factory workers wore them, but by the early 20th century, leather became more affordable to the working class and machines began to replace local clog makers. Clogs had a small resurgence during World War II, when leather was rationed, but soon. after the clomin gained the reputation of being a poor man's shoe and went out of fashion, and as molds for making clogs, so does this art. One of the country's last clog painters lives about 70 hours away, in the picturesque fishing village of Hindel Opin.

Peter Bzma has been painting clogs for almost four decades. He was not a person to study, so when he was 15 years old he already knew that he had to work every day with his hands. He starts with a base coat, either hand painted or sprayed. he smells a little between drying, applying a second coat of paint and sanding. It takes Peter 2 days to complete just the base color. He paints more easily and also serves to protect. He then applies local flowers such as daisies, tulips and a bird, and we call them. the lucky bird, the Kuda, adds shades of gray or brown and white to highlight.

I am painting now the typical flowers of the hindel opera, we call them the work of hoer schilder and it is from Scandinavia, it is very old, but we paint as if it were in nature and In nature, nothing is perfect, the flowers and the trees, so when you make it too big, too small, that's not a problem. Peter learned everything he knows from his father, who gave up fishing to paint in the 1970s. My father was not good at fishing, but he was always sick at sea. In 2016 he and his two sisters took over the family business.

Nowadays Peter still makes the designs his father taught him and I paint the same flower every day over and over and over and over and my father doesn't, that's no good again, wow, again for 2 years, it's better, easier, like dancing under your workstation, the paint has accumulated for generations and when it's finished or there's too much on it, then we like this because my father paints on this table, uh, many. Many years, it takes Peter around 2 hours to paint a pair of watches which he then sells for €50. I can't live on 25 uh euros in an hour forever because I have three children.

I have a wife. She needs a lot of money. My wife. so I have to think about other things. He says customers wouldn't buy his clogs if they were more expensive to drive business. He sells small souvenirs near Clin for only a few euros. These blues are actually painted in China and shipped back to the Netherlands. He also paints custom orders like horses and chairs and runs a gift shop, a skating museum and even a restaurant, so you have to try to do five things at once. Everything around him are reminders of the painters who preceded him.

A Living Museum. this is one of My Father's painting mascots Peter estimates there are less than 10 professional open hindel style painters left in the country the quality of the hand painting uh style I think he's gone just like Peter Martin can't earn the living with only his handmade wooden clogs, he says that almost no one wears them anymore in the countryside where I live in Lenberg, people wear them because they have to let the dog out at night, they do something in the garden, so he had You have to find a way to preserve your family's.

Living Heritage in 2007 began a new type of mosaic replicas of famous masterpieces such as Vermeer's Milkmaid from thousands of small clogs. His rbrand night guard took 30,000 shoes and 3 years to complete. My dad joked that maybe we could do the night watch from Rembrandt, so I said yes, it's very difficult, but a week later I was thinking, yeah, why don't you start with a pixelated version of the piece and then hand painted each mini shoe with one or two different colors before gluing it in place with oil paint? Paint two three times for best results, so I enlisted the help of volunteers who live here in the tourist area in the Netherlands.

Wooden clogs make excellent souvenirs, a symbol of the country like tulips, windmills and cheese. Martin charges over $260 for a handmade pair at that price, he sells only five a year, most of what is for sale in his store are machine made ones that cost around $30. You can see this one is handmade and this one is polished, machine sanded, yes what it does. You prefer, of course, why and you did, uh, yeah, you could see the art in it. The food manufacturer makes three pairs in a day and now we have faster factories, one can make 30 pairs in an hour to keep the business going.

He also hosts tour groups with his wife Marica and performs hand-carved clog demonstrations with his many activities. Both Peter and Martin have managed to keep their craft

alive

, but most clog craftsmen like them are close to retirement, so the future of their art forms is uncertain, my son. It's not to take over, so I guess I'm the last Woody Show creator in my family, that's what it is. Peter could suffer the same fate. None of his children plan to take over the family business. Now I am 50 years old. 52 and I think maybe we ended up at 65 and then it's over, that's how things go, wear the Nike Air high heels and this one, the Armani, yeah, this one, I think this one is nice, nice.