Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
Pages - 98
EVALUATION The shoes found in the Rozália Chapel were worn by women who died in the last two decades of the century. All but one represented Louis XV’s fashion. 62 year-old Anna Döchler could buy the high-heeled, low-cut shoe even around the middle of the century. Borbála Bárkány was buried in a low-heeled shoe characteristic of the first decades of the 19th century. Vilmos Pósa summerized the analysis results of the leather material of the shoes from Eger.9 The leather used both for the upper and the sole were tanned with alum, he writes, and they were only slightly coloured with vegetal tanning materials. Leathers for the uppers (goat, and sheep) were made in a similar way. The leathers of the uppers were tanned with alum, soaked with vegetal dying substances, then strongly stuffed. In result they better preserved the advantageous features than the soles. This complicated method was probably chosen because it was faster than vegetal tanning: the latter could take months until the process was completed. Glacé tanning was used for the insoles.10 Only one of the shoes from Vác had brown leather upper (Picture 3). Analysis of tanning has so far been made only on items that have been restored. At one of the items the upper was made of calf-skin of alum tanning (coffin no. 110), while goatskin of alum tanning was used for the dressing of the heels and for the insole of another item (coffin no. 73). In Vác, Veronika Skripetz, Zsófi Lafftsák, Anna Mária Szántó, Klára Skripetz, Barbara Harmos and Magdolna Salamon wore shoes of the characteristic Louis XV style. Each was made with the same technique, only the ornaments were different. The shoes of Erzsébet Virágh and her daughter Johanna Virágh are different in the shape of the heel (low) and also in technology. The adult woman whose name is not known was found in coffin no. 183 in the so-called Loretum. Her shoe was high- heeled, and the sewing of the upper to the sole was different from that observed on other shoes. It was in a very poor condition, and it could not yet be analysed in details. 3. Ornamented shoes with plaited ribbons from coffin no. 115 TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS The shoes belonged to the turnshoe type. The essence of the method is that the shoe was drawn on the last and sewn on the sole with the inside turned out. The steps of composition are the following: 98
