6ix Secrets: Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum unlocks the past through historic collection

When thinking of historical artifacts, footwear might not be the first thing to come to mind. But at the Bata Shoe Museum, there are priceless pieces dating back hundreds of years that each have an important story to tell, such as stockings that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.

“Footwear historically has not been taken seriously by collectors, which means there are still amazing pieces hidden in people’s attics or they inherit them,” Elizabeth Semmelhack, the museum’s senior curator, told Global News during a tour of their private artifact storage room.

Semmelhack said the museum has over 13,000 artifacts, some of which are so fragile that the pieces can’t be displayed due to light exposure.

One of the rarest pieces is a multi-coloured, man’s Persian riding boot believed to be from the 16th century.

“Men were the first to wear high heels in European fashion and they happily wore them for a 130 years,” Semmelhack said as she showed off the boot, which is protected in a plastic covering, adding boots with heels were associated with the military at the time.

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The boot is one of several pieces kept in protective storage so the items can be conserved for research and future generations. The museum doesn’t restore the pieces it receives from donors.

Also in footwear collection are shoe buckles, socks and stockings. Napoleon Bonaparte’s stockings are among the stand-out pieces.

“One of the things that should maybe strike you is that they’re not that small,” Semmelhack said, adding that Bonaparte – who is believed to have a short stature – actually stood at around 5’7″.

The museum doesn’t just collect period pieces. In the 1980s – before the era of Fitbits and smartphones – PUMA developed a computer sneaker.

“The idea was that you’d have a computer chip in the sneaker, you’d go for a run, then you’d come back and you’d plug your sneaker into your Commodore 64 and it would tell you how many calories you burned and how fast you ran,” Semmelhack said.

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She said the pieces likely won’t be exhibited again because of the deteriorated condition of the sneakers, which she said was due to experimenting with new yet ultimately weaker materials.

“It’s interesting to think that somebody had the forethought to imagine that computerized technology would be interesting and important in footwear, or for fitness, and think about where we are today.”

For Semmelhack, preserving all of the artifacts is critical.

“I think that’s one of the joys of the job is coming down and seeing really something that Mrs. Bata observed years ago which is that people’s feet are the same around the world and throughout time, but what they put on those feet is incredibly different,” she said.

“You have to think about that almost every shoe in here was worn by somebody, so again, one of the things we strive to do at the museum is to unlock those secrets as well.”

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