The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

tradition of naming related to a physical description. 76 If Jack boots of the
beginning of the seventeenth century had their name from the process of
jacking,77 Jockey, Hussar, Blucher, Wellington and Balmoral were named
without any relation to the product. 78 Wellingtons were renamed in honour of the
Duke of Wellington, probably by his bootmaker George Hoby. 79 National values
and events were associated to footwear (see illustration 37)80
This attribution of names functioned as a basic system of branding. It was not
a particular producer to be named, but a particular type of product. Naming
allowed also visual representation. 81 B. Clarke, boot and shoe warehouse in
Holborn, for instance, advertised in one of his trade cards of 1820s the different
types of boots available (illustration 3.3). Ready-made products could be
represented through the medium of a trade card. The trade cards represented a
catalogue of the typology of boots and shoes available.
3.3.3 International differentiation
that:
In 1707 John Blanch in his The Interest of Great Britain Consider'd wrote
no Person will wear wooden shooes, That has Money at Command to buy
Leather: And this Commodity will tre ble its Value in the Ballance of our
Account, being transported in shooes, and be a very agreeable Employment to our
Corporations.82
76 P. Byroe, The male image. Men 'sfashion in England, 1300-1970 (London, 1979), pp. 197-
201.
Treated horsehide with wax followed by tar or pitch to make the leather waterproof. F.E.
Ledger, Put your foot down: a treatise on the history of shoes (Venton, 1985), p. 98.
78
For a short overview on boots see J.W. Waterer, Leather and the warrior (Northampton,
198!), pp. 138-47.
The Wellington boot was previously called Blucher boot and changed to Wellington after
Waterloo. J.D. Devlin, The shoemaker (London, 1841), p. 41.
80
On the subject of national values and consumption see S. Nenadic, 'Romanticism and the
urge to consume in the first half of the nineteenth century', in M. Berg and H. Clifford, ed.,
Consumers and luxury: consumer culture in Europe, 1 650-1 850 (Manchester, 1999), pp. 208-27.
81
On branding see J. Styles, 'Manufacturing, consumption and design in eighteenth-century
Enland', in J. Brewer and R. Porter, ed., Consumption and the world of goods, cit., pp. 541-2.
s J. Blanch, The interest of Great Britain consider'd; in an essay upon wool, tin and leather...
(London, 1707), p. 14.
119