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Wooden shoes are commonly associated with the Dutch, but they were also very commonly worn in Belgium. Wooden shoes were mostly worn for work. In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium they are called " blokken ” (singular “ blok ”) rather than “ klompen ” as in the Netherlands. They were worn in both the French and Dutch speaking areas of Belgium. There ware different kind off wooden shoes. The painting was most off all in a yellow colour. Over the colour was in that case a “little sheet” off varnish. A second one was white, no painting, and no varnish. The ware, as far as I know, always make of willow wood. There was also a wooden shoe with a leader cap (hood) above the shoe. Those shoes was mostly for people with a “difficult” feet. Some people have a little “bulb” above there feet’s and the could not using the conventional shoes.
Wooden shoes are commonly associated with the Dutch, but they were also very commonly worn in Belgium.
Wooden shoes were mostly worn for work. They were widely wotn by the workingclass, people who did manual labor--factory workers, blacksmiths, farmers, ect. The primary reason that working people wore wooden shoes was that they were inexpensive. Leather shoes were much more expensive. Wooden shoes were also less expensive to repair. When a wooden shoe abrades on the heel, the owner repairs them with a peace of leather in the form off the worn piece. It could also be that a shoe “split” above. In that case the fixed a wire around the shoe, make it very solid. Although wooden shoes were inexpensive, they were rough inside and wore out stockings very rapidly. Women were cnstantly having to darn socks.
Tgere was no special clothing worn with wooden shoes. Since they were mostly worn by working-class people, however, they were generally worn with work clothes. I'm less sure about the children who wore them to school. Of course in Belgium today, they are only worn as part of folk costumes. The traditional clothes on which folk costumes are based were worn in Belgium during the late 19th centiry, the 1880s and 90s.
Children also wore wooden shoes. Some children wore them to school. Just as wooden shoes were primarily worn by working-class adults, we believe that they were most common with working-class children. A HBC reader reports, "I wore wooden shoes to school as a boy. I was born in 1947 and wore them until I was about 8-10 years old. I especially remember wearing them during the Winter. Wooden shoes are very warm. I wore them at other timescas well, but Winter was the mist common. I was in the last generation of Belgian children to wear wooden shoes. After the mid-1950s they were no longer worn by children, except as folk costumes."
We are not sure when Belgians and other Europeans first began wearing wooden shoes. A HBC reader tells us that school children wore them through the mid-1950s. Adults wore them a bit longer. Our HBC reader reports, "The older
people wore them even after we children stopped wearing them. My father, born in 1917, wore wooden shoes to school. He said it was very common at the time. My grandfather told me that he also wore them to school. Father very commonly wore wooden shoes as an adult, especially when he went into the fields. He wore them until he died in 1984. With the passage of his generation, wooden shoes were no longer worn in Belgium."
In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium they are called " blokken ” (singular “ blok ”) rather than “ klompen ” as in the Netherlands.
They were worn in both the French and Dutch speaking areas of Belgium. Our reader writes, "The use of wooden shoes was not different in the Flemish or in the French speaking part off Belgium."
There ware different kinds of wooden shoes. Most were made completely of wood. There was also a wooden shoe with a leader cap (hood) above the shoe. Those shoes was mostly for people with a “difficult” feet. Some people have a little “bulb” above there feet’s and the could not using the conventional shoes.
The painting was most off all in a yellow colour. Over the colour was in that case a “little sheet” off varnish. A second one was white, no painting, and no varnish.
The were, as far as I know, always ake of willow wood. [Van Hoof]
Van Hoof, Willy. E-mail message, February 2, 2004.
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