Last-Fitting and Pattern-Cutting

1888 book by Alfred Hannibal, reprinted from Boot and Shoe Trades Journal

published by The Leather Trades Publishers, Limited, London

Overall

Hannibal uses a great deal of flowery, sometimes highly amusing language to exhort the industry to improvement, while also browbeating it quite harshly, sometimes with obvious defensiveness. There is much to remind modern readers of a ranting blog post.

There are some specific, actionable tips and methods described, but they’re scattered throughout. The few diagrams are clean and useful. However, many geometric methods, as for pattern drafting and grading, lack figures that would do a lot of good in helping to visualize.

Notes

• girth adjustments for men’s boots:

  making up ¼th of an inch under the measure for joints and instep and ⅛th for the heel, but full up to the measure in the leg

• the foot should feel a properly adjusted boot or shoe clinging to it round the waist and heel

• customers cause many foot distortions by wearing stockings too short
• characterizes fittings as corresponding to repeating archetypes
  • No. 1:

    • very thin and bony, the instep showing but a very slight elevation

    • The joint of this foot will be found to measure nearly as much as the instep.

    • [in essence, Hannibal paints No. 1 as scrawny feet]
  • No. 2:
    • greater difference between 1 and 2 than other fittings

    • the smartest, most symmetrical, and elegant of the whole range of human feet

    • an evidence of gentle birth

    • a rise of three-quarters of an inch for the instep should, in all cases, be allowed for ladies’ work, and seven-eighths for men’s

    • [overall, Hannibal suggests people who aren’t starved or worked end up with No. 2 feet]
  • No. 3

    • fleshy, full-developed muscles

    • [subtle suggestion that working people start out with No. 2 feet, but get burlier from working]
  • No. 4
    • extra width
  • No. 5
• flat feet generally thin and bony
• plate between pages 46 and 47 shows contrasting outlines of a boot and a shoe last
• bad lasting:

  Usually this is through the quarters being pulled down too much at the corners of the heel and being lasted too tightly in the waist, and the with the outside made tighter than the lining. The consequence is that shoes gape at the quarters, are very unsightly in hand, and are loose and uncomfortable upon the foot. The majority of the boots made are dragged down far too much in this way; but, owing to the upper being tight over the instep of the last, the folly of this stupid practice does not show to the extent that it does in the shoe.

• It is at all times amusing to see what subtle ingenuity is employed to shift the faults of the guilty on to the shoulders of the innocent.