Bootmaking

Mr Neagu has been repairing shoes and has worked with leather since highschool. The workshop has all it takes to widen shoes, to chance the soles, to redo stitches or just to clean thoroughly a fancy leather. His passion for the craft can easily be seen in each order and on the Facebook page of the workshop one can find some of this order presented in detail. He is looking for an apprentice, but until now he hasn’t found the right person.

Mr Ilie’s shoe repair shop is next door to a tailor shop, right on Popa Soare Str. The usuals of the shop, mostly living in the neighborhood, always greet him, especially when the shoe-maker works at a new pair of shoes in front of the shop. He is in this business for a very long time and he is saddened by the fact that youngsters are not attracted by the show making craft. For him the work he does is a relaxing work that gives him great satisfaction and that in time has proven to be a good and stable means of supporting himself and his family.

“Prăvălia lui Virgil” is an excelent example of someone that is said to be “in tune with the trends”. Mr Virgil has always paid attention to how he can accomodate the client’s whishes and to all the novelties. When he is at the shop he wears all the time an leather apron handmade in his shop. Here you can mend fur clothing, shoes, one can shapen scissors, duplicate keys, paint leather, but one can also create from scratch leather products.

Mr. Vasile is a curious cobbler, willing to learn and adapt to the demands of today’s fashion. Customers come mostly in autumn and winter, because footwear that is worth keeping and repairing is closely linked to how covered your foot is against rain, wind and everything between. Mr. Vasile works has been a cobbler for 28 years and recenly he became an independent cobbler, with owb workshop.

Mr. Daniel is a remarcable cobbler. He has been working in the field for 30 years and went through prestigious national and international companies. His promotion was among the lasts that learnt how to make shoes manually and completely: with sewn frame, sewn sole, manually mounted. As he well says, “no matter if you are prime-minister or a confused citizen, you still need to put a heel piece”. He opened this workshop in 2013, when he returned from Athens, where he worked on sophisticated machineries for shoe-making. When he visits another country, Mr. Daniel enjoys finding and walking into the shoe-making workshops from that place. For the future he holds important plans related to perpetuating the craft of cobblers.

The shoe-shop of Mr. Nicolae is not an ordinary one. He takes not more than 5 minutes to see what the problem is with the product or what the client actually wishes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because Mr. Nicolae not only repairs shoes but he creates them from scratch and not just regular shoes. He is specialised in dancing shoes, that as we know, they have to be not only pretty, but also very strong and perfectly fitting on the dancer’s feet. The shoemaker has taught many other shoemakers who, in turn, have their own shops or even shoe factories. After the 90s he has noticed that the craft is in danger of being forgotten and he was more than willing to share his knowledge to whoever was interested, considering that there is enough room for everybody operating in this field.



 Atelierul domnului Maricel pare din stradă un simplu magazin de vânzare încălţăminte. Însă toate încălţările expuse sunt de fapt făcute de el. Domnul Maricel a pornit cu dreptul în cariera de meşter cizmar făcând-o din plăcere şi pasiune şi ajungând să se supraspecializeze prin diferite programe şi mastere, care ţin de cum se lucrează pielea şi cum o determini să ia forma şi culoarea pe care o vrei tu. Meşterului i-ar plăcea să împărtăşească din cunoştiintele lui, el având de-a lungul timpului foarte mulţi ucenici, dar e dezamăgit de lipsa unui sistem care să uşureze viaţa ucenicilor.

Mr. Stan is a talkative type of person, and he strongly believes that if one does a craft like his – shoe maker – is impossible to be otherwise. A great share of such kind of craft is working with people, side which the shoemaker has always enjoyed. In a workshop almost the size of a shower cabin, Mr Stan vividly repairs shoes, changes heel lifts or just cleans particular leathers.

We find Mr. Constantin on Corneliu Coposu Street, behind a very attractive shop facade. Mr. Constantin has been a cobbler for many years now, in the present workshop he has been working already for 26 years. He repairs zips, soles, heel lifts, stitches and does gluing even for purses, which we too often abandon even if we could so easily repair instead.

“Cizmăria mea”, located close to the train station, has been opened for no longer than 2 years by Mr Sabin and it is part of a Craiova-based franchise with the same name. Mr Sabin is a courageous workman who after he realized that working in a big company is no longer fulfilling, has reviewed his options and decided to do something that he truly likes. Hence the shoemaking business. Young, active, Mr Sabin is to be given as an example in the artisans community and even outside of it, when it comes to what does it imply to follow a career.