About us
Where we’ve been and and where we’re heading now.
The Cordwainer Shop was founded in the 1930s by Edward F. Mathews.
His son, Paul, carried on the shop tradition as main footwear designer, and except for a 4-year stint in WWII, shoemaking became his life's work and joy.
Many of his footwear designs are still produced at the shop today. Molly Grant now carries on the Cordwainer tradition of creating custom handmade leather footwear, and it has become as much a passion to Molly as it was to Paul. She specializes in teaching shoe making workshops as a way to share this tradition of craftsmanship.
About Molly Grant
Molly Grant began leatherworking in her early 20's, first by working on her own and then by apprenticing at the Black Swan Leather shop in Portsmouth, NH, where she learned the basic skills of traditional leatherworking. She first saw Cordwainer Shoes when she was ten years old at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's Fair, known nationally as the oldest craft fair in the nation. She became a juried member in 1989, and participated by showing her line of handbags. There, she had the opportunity to meet Paul Mathews, owner of the Cordwainer Shop. Within a few months' time Molly was traveling to craft shows nationally with Paul and learning the Cordwainer art.
Molly still makes handbags, but the main business is teaching shoe making workshops at her Canterbury, NH studio.
Make your own pair of custom shoes alongside a master leather artisan.
Molly Grant has been teaching the Cordwainer art for 25 years. Join us for a workshop in New Hampshire for expert guidance on creating a pair of shoes custom made for your feet.
A brief History of the Cordwainer Shop
As told by Paul Mathews
Paul Mathews in 1937 in Weymouth, MA
The story of the Cordwainer Shop begins in 1900. My father, Edward Mathews, fresh out of high school and fired up to bring culture to the back woods, began to seek his fortune as a traveling bookseller for the Tabbard Inn Library. Driving around the countryside with horse and buggy, dressed "to the nines," complete with derby hat and toothpick shoes, his feet were complaining. He pulled up to a wayside watering trough and on an impulse dunked them, shoes and all, in the refreshing water. That experience launched him onto the quest for comfortable footwear. He soon discovered that the only available sensible footwear to be found was in the style of "old men's comfort shoes," typically made of black vici kid with boxed toe and laced up over the ankle. Many must have been the curious glances cast after the sober Beau Brummel with the incongruous footwear! But Father, already unconventional, was totally indifferent in his determination to find the truth. (One of his many well-remembered adages he liked to quote from Emerson: "We can be busy and commonplace, or devote our lives to the discovery of the laws that live!")
He set about to do something to "make a difference," to effect a change in the concept of correct footwear and to make foot comfort the rule of fashion. It was this objective which conceived and launched the revolutionary Antioch Research at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in the early 1920s. This was a comprehensive and innovative study of the effects of conventional footwear as defined in the "flapper" image on the posture and functional foot health of the subject coeds.
"As fools rush in where angels fear to tread," the revolutionary study had the advantage of being unprejudiced by unconventional training, and flew in the face of reigning orthodox orthopedic principles, as in so-called "corrective" women's footwear visually and functionally encumbered with such atrocities as two inch stacked heels and rigid steel shanks.
"The pliable deerskin moccasin of the American Indian and the classical heelless sandal of the ancient Greeks, these were the true prototypes of modern footclothing." This was his expression of the ideal and concept which produced the original Antioch Shoe, the first "style shoe" designed with low heels and round toes.
Came the crash! This event brought into Father's focus and consciousness a new aspect of the problem: how to construct a practical shoe or kit of shoe parts which could be assembled at home by unskilled hands to make an economical and healthful shoe for children of families in depressed circumstances. The development of this "self taught kit" idea led to the unique hand-sewn method of shoe construction that is distinctive today in our fine handcrafted line of custom footwear.
-Paul Mathews
Learn more about the Cordwainer Shop in our first book!
The Pathfinder: The Shoe that Built the Cordwainer Shop is a detailed instruction book for making your own Pathfinder shoes and also details our story, which began in the 1930s. You can purchase a stand-alone digital copy, or receive one as part of our Pathfinder Shoe Kit.