Shoes: The Complete Sourcebook - John Peacock

From Publishers Weekly
Shoe lovers will salivate over this comprehensive pictorial guide to fabulous footwear through the ages. Peacock, a former costume designer for BBC Television in London, illustrates every possible shoe imaginable, starting with an array of skimpy sandals from Ancient Egypt and moving chronologically up to a French high-top sneaker from 2003. The book is almost entirely visual, including over 2,000 colorful drawings of men's and women's boots, slippers and heels. With only brief descriptions of each shoe's materials and design, readers will probably be left wanting a more in-depth history about the development of footwear through the centuries. Who designed that red, white and blue French mule in 1789, for example? And what led to the creation of the first Assyrian boot from 3,000 years ago, which is so strikingly similar to present day Uggs? For those interested in costumes and fashion, the illustrations will make this an invaluable reference source. There's plenty of variation among the models depicted, from elaborately beaded Byzantine Emperor's shoes to simple English heels with bows from the early 1900s, but one notices how trends recur throughout shoe history. Recent designs borrow from millenniums of style, like the huge Venetian 16th-century platforms and pointy medieval ankle boots. Peacock also includes a helpful index profiling important designers from the 1800s to the present.
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Product Description
The most comprehensive and detailed history of shoes ever published, with more than 2000 specially drawn illustrations.
John Peacock charts the development of every kind and style of footwear from earliest times to the present day, for both men and women. His drawings reproduce in meticulous detail a host of representative examples from every era: the simple sandals of Ancient Egypt, made from natural fibers; exquisite Greek footwear of the "Golden Age," including boots made from rawhide with leather linings and leg bindings; richly embroidered and bejeweled shoes of the Byzantine empire; the fantastic pike-toed boots newly fashionable in the fourteenth century; the hugely exaggerated platform heels of the sixteenth century; eighteenth-century women's slippers of the finest silk; and a huge range of contemporary shoes, from sneakers and stilettos to the latest footwear in radical materials and experimental styles.

The pictures are arranged in six chronological sections and accompanied by full descriptions, including details of materials, heel and toe styles, decorations, and fastenings. An invaluable reference section includes a time chart summarizing the development of shoes throughout the centuries, a concise bibliography, and biographies and histories of the world's leading shoe designers and manufacturers, including Manolo Blahnik, Salvatore Ferragamo, Charles Jourdan, Roger Vivier, and Vivienne Westwood.

This encyclopaedic survey, with its colorful and detailed illustrations, will become the unrivaled reference work in its field, indispensable to any shoe enthusiast, designer, or collector. Over 2000 illustrations, 800 in color.

http://www.amazon.com/Shoes-Complete-Sourcebook-John-Peacock/dp/0500512124/ref=pd_sim_b_1