MiddletownJournal.com

In the 1980s, a man taught Harry Nelis III the art of making wooden shoes.

Nelis, a shoemaker who teaches four aspiring shoe carvers a year how to carve wooden shoes at his Dutch Village in Holland, Mich., is passing along the ancient craft.

"It's a lost art, almost," said Nelis while demonstrating Klompen/Wooden Shoemaking at the City Building in downtown Middletown during Middfest, which this year features the Netherlands. "It's probably 5 or 6 people in the U.S. who know how to do this."

Klompen is the Dutch word for wooden shoes, which were worn throughout Europe in the Dark Ages. They are made of willow and poplar woods in Holland, he said.

Shoemakers use soft poplar wood to make a pair of wooden shoes in two hours with various tools, such as spoon chisels and cork screws, Nelis said. Shoes are made in centimeters, with the smallest wearable size being 12 centimeters and the largest up to 34 centimeters, he said.

Julie Chaney of Middletown brought her daughter and a friend to Middfest hoping to catch a glimpse of how wooden shoes are made.

"We just want to see him do it. We just want to learn and see how they carve them out like that," Chaney said.

Today, all wooden shoes are made on machines that can make several pairs in 10 minutes, Nelis said.

"The machines put the cobbler out of business because he couldn't compete with the time difference," Nelis said. "So around 1870, when the machines were made, the cobbler had to find another line of work, and ever since then, all the shoes are machine-made."

Wooden shoes are still worn every day on farms in Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, he said.

"They (farmers and professionals in the nursery business) like the fact that their cattle can step on their foot and it won't hurt, as well as it keeps their feet dry."

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2595 or dewilson@coxohio.com.