The piece for the month of May is a painting made by Pep Rotger Seguí in which the different parts of the Goodyear shoe are shown in a very visual way. It is a painting made in the early nineties of the twentieth century, and has now been donated to the Museum by its author. Pep Rotger Seguí, a shoemaker by profession specializing in shapes, made this painting, and others of a similar nature, while working in the former Yanko shoe factory. These paintings were displayed in stores (many of them in Japan, where this type of footwear was sold a lot) so that customers could better appreciate how the shoe they were buying had been made. The Goodyear shoe, which, in the words of Pep Rotger is considered “the Ferrari of shoes” for its great quality, was invented in the United Kingdom by Charles Goodyear in 1872. It is characterized by having a double seam that joins, on the one hand, the body of the shoe on the turn, and on the other, a second outer stitching that fixes the sole to this piece. This high-quality shoe stands out for being very comfortable and resistant, and has been – and still is – one of the most manufactured shoes in the Raiguer region. In the picture you can see the different parts of the shoe of the English type vega (the most representative model that is made with the Goodyear sewing system): from the drawn shape, to the final shoe split in half, through the leather trim, palm, lining, insole, buttress, turn, sewing threads, sole and trim, sole and heel. All these parts show us the great complexity that characterizes this type of shoe and the large number of operations required to manufacture it.
