Bootmaker

Traditional craft

A bootmaker  is a craftsman who makes and repairs boots. It is a typical Hungarian craft, but at the moment it is practically extinct.

In addition to thigh high leather boots, the master bootmaker once also made leather shoes and other leather footwear.

The word Csizmadia, which means bootmaker in Hungarian, is of Turkish origin, and its first occurrence can be dated to the end of the 1500s. Even before the Turkish era, thigh high leather footwear with inverted seams were already being made.

This type of sewing was present until the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, for a long time, the boots were made on symmetrical frames, so they were "one-legged". In the course of mechanization, the duplicating machines appeared, with which it was possible to produce both left- and right-footed boot trees  cheaply and quickly - and from then on, the "two-footed" boots began to spread.

Boots were worn differently by social classes. If for the footwear of the peasants, it was enough to shape the head part of the boots by hand and then sew them on a wooden board, for the high social classes the making of the boots, required special and expensive equipment. A shoe embossing machine was often shared by several bootmakers.