It is among the finest made shoes you can see today, a collection that Crockett & Jones made for a major international exhibition in 1911. Here’s a close look at some of these masterpieces.



I have shown some of these amazing shoes before, then it was about the examples featured in the Crockett & Jones showroom at the Northampton factory. Now I show some shoes that can be found in glass cabinets in the two stores the brand has on Jermyn Street in London.

The quality of factory-made shoes was very high around the turn of the turn of the century, and many of the most talented craftsmen worked for the factories. C&J’s factory was one of the great ones also back then, and ahead of a major international craft exhibition in Turin, Italy, in 1911, it was decided they would make a serious effort to showcase its skills. A small series of shoes made by hand, with the best leather they could get (at this time material quality was generally much better than it is today), made by their best at the various parts of the making. In other words, they are not representative of what C&J’s factory shoes looked like at the time, but showed what they were capable of.

It was not the best light in the stores but hopefully the pictures below give the shoes decent justice. Please take time to click and enlarge the pictures, zoom in, and study the amazing craftsmanship.