Meet a Maker: Edition 38

Meet Simon Brock

1. What is your craft and how did you get into it?

I’m a clog maker. I was a furniture maker originally and did the HND furniture making course. For a couple of years I did furniture restoration until I had a midlife crisis when I was 23. I ended up working on a farm for the summer and when I came back I didn’t have any work. Around this time I went to a festival and met a chap called Trefor Owen who was making clogs there. I was interested in what he was doing; the soles in particular. Based on our conversation and my interest in his making process, he said if you’re that interested come and stay with me and I’ll show you how it’s done. So I did. I went and stayed with him for a week in his house for no money and he showed me as much as he could in a week. I knew it was remarkable at the time, but it seems even more remarkable now to think that someone would be that generous.

From my week training with Trefor, I realised I didn’t know anything about leatherworking. It took a bit of time, but I taught myself leatherwork for a few years. I caught up with Trefor at the same festival six years later and he asked me why I am not making clogs yet. I realised he was right and went back to his house for a couple days of further training with him. At that time I would return home and try to do what he’d shown me as best I could with borrowed or improvised equipment. I did not have a real workspace to make clogs at that time. I would go back and forth to Trefor to show what I had done to improve my skills until eventually he said there’s not much wrong with my clogs. It was then that I took the plunge and got a workshop space and started clog making full time in 2018.

2. What is one interesting fact about you?

I used to do bell-ringing and Morris dancing. I got into making clogs in the first place because I was at a folk festival doing Morris dancing. Sadly the commitment of ringing every Sunday morning became a bit too onerous and it got in the way of the Morris dancing.

3. How long have you been making?

There are a few milestones in my clog making career so far. 2010 was when I first had the idea to start making clogs and did that week training session with Trefor. It was in 2016 when I picked it back up again in earnest and got the clog knives and lasts. During the next two years I borrowed some workshop space from a friend for two half days a week. I consider those two years as the apprenticeship where it was the learning period of clog making. 2018 onwards was when I went full time; however it wasn’t until the middle of 2019 that I think I finished working out how to make clogs well. I think the first 100 pairs were a little bit off, but they got better quickly as I continued. After 100 pairs, I had refined the shape of the soles and I wasn’t making silly mistakes or thinking the completed pair were just okay.

4. Who is/are your favourite maker(s) in your craft? Anyone you admire in your craft field?

I obviously look up to Trefor who was the original inspiration for me and my original mentor. There is also Jeremy Atkinson who I did some training with that I greatly respect. He’s the last one routinely hand carving every pair of clog soles from start to finish. Additionally, there’s another chap who you would only have heard of if you were buying clogs in the 80s and 90s called Rick Rybicki. He’s a really nice chap and I got all my lasts from him. I tracked him down and asked if I could buy any of his old equipment now that he is retired. He was reluctant at first until I showed him my clogs and he saw how serious I was about clog making. Rick then started offering me his pattern for clogs and all these tools and materials. It was great. I think my clogs hopefully are a synthesis of the way that Trefor taught me to make them, a lot of insight into the shape of the soles that I got from Jeremy, and a general aesthetic that is quite close to what Rick used to do.

5. What is the most challenging skill/technique you learned in your craft?

The most challenging process to learn has to be the knives. The first time I tried it out it felt like a wild animal. I know it’s just a long piece of metal with a hook on the end and an eye on the bench but it seems like it can go anywhere, which is its strength, but also possibly terrifying when you don’t know how to wield it yet. It took a lot of practice and it’s quite physically demanding as well. After a whole day of carving, I really feel it in a way that I don’t with any of the other processes. So it was definitely the hardest to get to a level of confidence.

The other part of the clog making process that I find a bit unnerving is the lasting, which is where I soak the leather for the upper part of the shoe and then stretch it down over the wooden former (last). Occasionally it can stretch in ways that are unexpected. Therefore part of the skill of putting the uppers together is reading the hide and working out which bits are stretchier than others. Then making different components of the upper (top of the shoe) from different parts of the hide accordingly. But even so, sometimes you miss something and the shoes can look a bit wonky. It’s always fixable but it’s that part of the process that still feels like something can go wrong.

6. What is your favourite part of your craft? 

Lasting, which I’ve already said is the most challenging part of the clog making process for me. However, it’s also the part where a wooden sole and a leather upper go from looking fairly unpromising at the start to looking like a shoe. Once the lasting is done, it’s the bit at which the clogs are almost finished. By the time I’ve lasted the shoe, I’m thinking in terms of the next pair because all I have to do for the current pair is trim the excess leather off and nail them up. So lasting oddly becomes the part that always feels satisfying and I think to myself that this pair is in the bag.

Overall what I enjoy the most about my clog making practice is seeing people wearing my clogs and seeing people dancing in them. It’s even better when seeing people win dance competitions in them. I have always followed the competitive step dancing results of the Welsh National Eisteddfod very closely. I think I’ve managed now to get my clogs on the one, two, and three podium finishes. I give a lot of credit to the people who are dancing in the clogs.

7. What project are you most proud of and why?

I made some brogues for a really good dancer in the Welsh step dancing tradition. They’ve got the wing cap and punched detail. It was the first pair I made with upper patterns I had to generate entirely myself. They were black patent and silver mock snake skin. I have made lots of brogues since then that are more eye-catching, but I still look back on that first pair and think that was when I leveled up a little bit in the craft.

8. If someone who knows nothing about you or your practice could know one thing, what would it be?

The one thing that I would like people to know about clogs is that they are not necessarily associated with the Netherlands. Often the first thing that people ask me is if I ship the clogs to the Netherlands. I don’t because they already have their clog making out there. The second question I then tend to get is did clogs originate in the Netherlands? Not really. British clogs have a wooden sole and a leather upper. It is not unique for clogs, but it’s unusual, rather than the fully encased wooden ones.