Old Things Considered
Advice and trivia for the do-it-yourselfer
Ghislaine Darden © 2008

We have pocket doors between our living room and dining room and I wanted to know the history of these doors. --- Cindy S.

Pocket doors were originally designed as space savers for late 19th and early 20th century Victorian homes. The stateliest rooms such as the library, dining room or parlor, were often outfitted with pocket doors to separate principal rooms from the center hallway or foyer. These doors hang on a track neatly concealed inside the “doorway” wall. The doors could be pulled together when privacy was required, or pushed into the wall to open up the room, saving both floor space and wall space during large gala events.

Did You Know…

. . . that the male travelers of the 16th century had a hand in the development of the high heeled shoe? The “rider’s heel,” an inch or two high, was first developed around 1500 to prevent the rider’s foot from sliding off of the stirrup. This was the precursor to boot worn by cowboys today.

At the time, women were wearing “chopines”, a very tall open-backed slipper. The chopines were routinely a half foot high; elite ladies in France or Italy could at times be seen in an unbelievable 18” tall chopine. For a very rich Renaissance woman, these shoes did offer a measure of practicality in that they kept the skirts out of the mud. But of course you could barely walk, needing the assistance of servants on either arm.

French women accustomed to these shoes were soon in for a big treat when Catherine de Medici married the Duc D’Orleans in 1533, at the age of 14. He would become the French king Henry II, and she the queen of France. The petite young woman asked her Italian cobbler to modify the chopine into a manageable shoe with a higher heel, giving her a bit of height during her initial meeting of the French Court. Her elegant newly fashioned four inch “heeled” shoe was a phenomenal success, establishing her as the true Godmother of high heeled shoes.

The men, not to be outdone, would quickly adopt a refined high heel of their own during the reign of Louis XIV, towards the late 1600s. Louis XIV was only 5’3” and he too wanted to increase his stature by wearing 3-4 inch heels in the Versailles Court. On special occasions the King would don particularly fancy shoes decorated with hand-painted scenes of his military conquests.

Both men and women continued to wear high heels until the end of the 18th century. High heels resurfaced again late in the 1800s, but this time exclusively popular among women. By 1878, George Warren Brown would open a shoe factory is St. Louis, where he developed the familiar name brands of Naturalizer, Life Stride and Buster Brown for the little ones. The Naturalizer shoe line was a radical concept, providing women with both a stylish and a comfortable shoe, for the first time in decades.

Did You Know…

. . . that you have a version of the ancient game that taught Hindu children right from wrong, good and evil and morals in the 2nd century BC? The game board, called Moksha Patamu, was decorated with numbered squares. Some of the numbered squares represented good deeds and virtues such as generosity, faith, humility. These numbers were connected to higher numbers by ladders, with the highest number representing Nirvana. Other numbers represented evil or vices such as theft, lust, anger or murder. Decorations of serpents led to the lower numbers, away from Nirvana. The children would learn that by behaving morally or doing good deeds, they could climb the ladder, but doing a bad deed would bring you shame. They would also learn that a virtuous life is more difficult, with only 4 paths leading to Nirvana and 12 snakes leading to sin.

By the 1890’s, the British would become familiar with this game as a result of their colonial rule of India. This children’s game would be introduced and embraced by Victorian England, because it taught their children the important Victorian virtues such as thrift and penitence, and contracted the vices and sinful behaviors. By 1943, the Milton Bradley Company had introduced it to America with a slight redesign. The serpents became chutes, giving the game its modern name of Chutes and Ladders!

Ghislaine Darden of Benner Street is an old house enthusiast and a Highland Park resident since 1984. Send her your antique and restoration questions to oldthings@hpmirror.com