Proper educational books about shoemaking has been a rare sight in recent decades, and books specifically about shoe upper making even more rare. Hartmut and Dustin Seidich, father and son who runs a specialised uppermaking workshop in Germany, set out to change this with an extremely ambitious book project. Shoegazing have read the English version of volume 1.
FACTS:
Title: Uppermaking for Bespoke and Orthopaedic Shoemakers – Volume I, patternmaking
Authors: Hartmut Seidich, Dustin Seidich, English translation by Kevin Leahy
Publisher: Self-published
Number of pages: 300
Format: Hardcover
Price: €140 (Available to order via uppermaking.com for international deliveries. I received the book for review.)
One version of material to use for the last copying method of doing shoe patterns.
This review is long overdue, as I’m way behind on a lot of things around Shoegazing. But I didn’t want to haste out a review without having time to read through the book properly, and write a proper text about it. This is a book that deserves that.
First some background. The Seidich family has been working with shoe uppers for over a century, with Hartmut being third generation and his son Dustin fourth. They run Seidich Schäfte (Seidich Uppers), a workshop based in Herne in the western parts of Germany, which exclusively focus on doing shoe uppers for bespoke and orthopadic shoemakers. Hartmut is an uppermaker, master shoemaker, orthopaedic shoemaker and lecturer in uppermaking at the Academy of the Chamber of Crafts in Düsseldorf. Dustin is an uppermaker, shoemaker and also lecturer at the same school.
Ever since Hartmut started teaching in Düsseldorf about two decades ago he has received questions about why there hasn’t been published any new proper books about uppermaking for half a century. This resulted in him and his son started doing research for this book project some ten years ago. Hartmut thought: “to write a book about what I’ve been doing for 30 years can’t be that difficult”. He was completely wrong.
The book is richly illustrated with photos and drawings, to make it as accessible and practical as possible.
There’s many ways to do uppers and to do it well, and although Seidich had perfected their version of doing it, and know how many others did it, they surely didn’t know in detail other versions. And that’s needed to be able to explain it properly in a book. So a lot, A LOT, of research took place both from old literature and other makers. And as word spread that they were working on a new uppermaking book, wishes of parts to cover in it started coming in, and the scope constantly expanded.
Apart from the content, there were also practical challenges. First they worked with a publisher, but soon realised it wouldn’t work out well, so they decided to publish it themselves, with all the challenges that comes with that. And more.
However, back in October 2022 they published the first volume of their book in German, and two years later the English translation that I have read was published. To translate this type of books and get all the specialised expressions right isn’t easy, here the American bootmaker Kevin Leahy has done great work with the translation and also other English speaking shoemakers have weighed in on certain terms.
Volume one covers the following topics:
• Setting up a workplace for uppermaking
• Dress code
• Design
• Tools and aids for patternmaking
• Geometric system
• Different last copying methods
• Standard forme and detailed patterns
• Effects of thick inserts, upper padding and orthopedic counters
• Different shoe cuts
• And much more
They’ve just dropped a special pattern collection to complement the volume one book. This is a box in the same design as the books that contains nine complete pattern sets with over 100 drawings in total, for the most common styles of classic footwear plus a sneaker pattern. Included is a booklet with instructions and further guidance, also on how to continue to make personalised alterations of these patterns. The volume two book is in the works, this will contain a lot of info on materials and tanning, knife sharpening, clicking, skiving and much more. The final book will then go through the rest of the uppermaking process with the stitching of the uppers etc.
On top of that, all who purchase a book gets access to an online glossary that will be constantly updated with new terms and information. It’s only in German at the moment, but translation to English is ongoing, but with over 1,000 technical terms being explained it takes a while. All in all, the project will be a very comprehensive guide to making shoe uppers and all the things that surrounds it.
Detailed.
If I would use one word to describe this book, it would be “comprehensive”. Not only when it comes to topics covered, as you can see in the bullet points above, with everything from the history of how the uppermaking trade has developed to working conditions and legislations, everything from different pattern making systems to dress codes. But in most sections, especially the technical ones, it’s also extremely detailed and often showcase various versions to do the same thing, so that readers really can get a deeper understanding and see different potential routes to achieve good results.
I’m also fond of the clever idea to highlight certain special bits, warnings and extra tips in grey boxes throughout. It’s those things that might otherwise often be left out of a book like this, things that one might otherwise only hear from the person training you in a workshop or one learn by doing the mistakes oneself first, but here they’ve tried to include as much of that often very particular and specific details to really highlight as many aspects as possible.
These segments in grey squares cover specific details.
The book is certainly aimed to educate shoemakers or coming shoemakers, it’s not really intended to be read by shoe nerds like me. This means that there is a bunch of the technical parts that fly over my head, I don’t have that deep knowledge on pattern making to comprehend everything. That said, I still enjoyed reading it, and I learnt so much. I also know that many experienced shoemakers have found great value of it, makers like Daniel Wegan of Catella or Romanian maker Victor Vulpe have praised the book. So it’s not just an educational piece for those who want to learn things from the beginning.
It’s evident that Hartmut and Dustin have been working with education for a long time, since it’s highly pedagogic and methodical in the description of various processes and steps. They don’t just explain how to do things, they explain why it’s done. That makes very advanced things like for example the old geometric system used for patternmaking, a highly mathematical and theoretical system, impressively accessible.
A spread of many on the geometric system.
The ambition to “cover everything” is admiring, although I personally think that for example the section about dress codes is a bit superfluous. As such norms are disappearing more and more in large parts of the world (regardless of how one might feel about it), this information is less likely to age well than most other parts of the book.
I have a similar reservation regarding the legal parts. While I completely understand why the authors wanted to include these sections, they may also risk becoming out of date, at least partly, in a not too distant future (I also think the section on copyright is a bit tilted, the lawyer who helped out here for example highlight the European Union flag as an example of how copyright works, but this is from all I gathered in my conversations with lawyers on the topic irrelevant, since footwear are utilitarian – functional – meaning copyright and design protection is very different from for example artistic work like a flag design).
But these are just marginal notes. Overall, the Uppermaking for Bespoke and Orthopaedic Shoemakers is likely the most important book project within shoemaking written in many decades. I know this volume one is already used in teaching of uppermaking in Germany and beyond, as well as being read by established shoemakers and uppermakers globally, and the complete project is likely to be a reference work that will be used for many, many decades to come. It’s so important that we continue to produce proper documentation also in bookform to preserve traditional shoe craftsmanship for future generations. When done as ambitious and with such knowledge as Hartmut and Dustin is doing it here, one can only applaud it.
Only the topic of pencils covers plenty of pages of the book. Comprehensive was the word.
