5 questions for Aistė of Woolenclogs
Aistė and Tadas have felted shoes in Lithuania since 2014, with wool, hot water and olive-oil soap. He felts every pair and stitches the soles; she runs everything around the making, after fifteen years in IT. Five questions on European wool, an old machine, and where a shoe takes its first step.
What's something about how you work that would surprise people?
That we use only EU-sourced materials through the whole production chain, from the wool to the packaging. The wool comes from European sheep farms and stays as it is: undyed for the natural greys and browns, or coloured with plants when a piece calls for it. We felt it with nothing but hot water and traditionally made olive-oil soap, and the box a pair leaves in is European too. It's a lot of small decisions about suppliers, but nothing in the shoe needs to come from anywhere else.
What do you own that you'll never replace?
Our sole sewing machine, a Frobana. It's old, but very reliable. The soles on our shoes and boots are stitched rather than glued, so a pair can be worn hard and still last, and this is the machine that does the stitching. Tadas sews every sole on it, and it has never let us down.
What's something you do that doesn't make business sense?
I imagine the travel routes for all of our shoes. When a pair is finished and packed, I think about where it's going and where the next step taken in these shoes will be. A kitchen floor early in the morning, a garden path, a walk through deep snow. It's fun, and it changes nothing about how the shoe is made. But every pair leaves here and has a life we never get to see, and I like to picture a bit of it.
What's the view from where you work?
This is the window of our workshop in Lithuania. An apple tree, the neighbours' roof, and the wool for the next pair on the sill.
What are you still trying to get right?
Finding the perfect shape for all feet. At the moment we have two distinct types of shoes, and each of them has been refined pair by pair since we started felting in 2014. Felt is shaped by hand, and every foot is a little different, so there can always be more research.
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