The Bata Shoe Museum
Today's Spotlight is part of a new series of stories and reports about Czechs in Canada airing on Radio Prague throughout the month of March. In this edition Jan Velinger takes us to the exciting Bata Shoe Museum right in the centre of Toronto. Among his guests: the founder of the museum itself Sonja Bata, wife of famous Czech-born businessman Tomas Bata, whose shoes are recognised world-wide.
Another busy day in the heart of Toronto. Traffic passes quickly through the popular Annex District at the corner of Bloor Street and St. George. A corner which is home to the Bata Shoe Museum. Opened ten years ago, the museum is one of most visually-daring buildings in the city - a giant modernist shoebox: all angles, all a careful balance of leaning facades and glass with a "lid" slightly askew.
The Bata Shoe Museum's founder, Sonja Bata, has spent most of her professional life in the footwear business. She married into the Czech Bata family in 1946, and was instrumental in helping her husband rebuild their family's shoe business abroad.
"1946 was a difficult year for the Bata shoe organisation because it was obvious that the Iron Curtain was going to come down. My husband wanted to rebuild the organisation, particularly in developing parts of the world. He had an outstanding group of young Czechs around him who had left Czechoslovakia, who were passionate in creating another organisation. And, I wanted to be a part of their team. I became involved in product development and factory and store design, how to make shoes and know them, so that gradually over the years I became quite an expert. As a result I love shoes!"
"You must realise that when I started collecting shoes I never thought of creating a museum - that happened much, much later in my life. What happened was that, when travelling around the world, I noticed that different cultures wore totally different footwear and I couldn't figure out 'why'. Because, after all, the foot is the same the whole world over: we have the same bones, muscles, and tendons. So, why is it that the Japanese wear getas, and why is it that the Dutch have clogs, and our native people have moccasins. I was intrigued to find out how it was that in certain cultures the shoe shapes change so much."
The museum's curator Elizabeth Semmelhack agrees that what is intriguing about shoes is learning why - historically - a certain type of shoe was made and worn. She took me around one of the Bata Shoe Museum's current exhibitions, titled "Paths Across the Plains", pointing out the not so obvious:
"This exhibition looks at plains moccasins and plains shoes from the 19th century. It's a time of incredible change that happens across the Great Plains: the Great Plains cultures themselves are being transformed by the white cultures coming in. And, looking at the political things that are going on, you'd imagine that nobody would have the time - or the interest - to make decorated clothing. But, the women respond with this explosion of creative energy: beads are coming in, different design motifs are coming in, and also as the cultures change expressions of status are changing as well.
One of my favourite areas in this exhibition is the Sioux area, and what we're looking at right here are beautifully beaded shoes, and you'll notice that the soles are also beaded! This, at first glance, seems incredibly impractical. The reason why the soles were beaded was because this was an expression of 'horse wealth', because you didn't have to walk from place to place if you owned a lot of horses. So, again, by looking at the shoes themselves they can lead you to understand impulses in the culture: how the women were doing their work, what inspired them, what period they lived in."
I was also able to see an equally inspiring exhibit now on view called "Beads, Buckles, and Bows": four-hundred years of embellished footwear, including elegantly embroidered shoes from 18th century Italy. On entering the room a quote reads "Many a man's heart has been kept wandering by the bow on his wife's slipper". A sentiment more or less true today! I ask one couple what they think about the exhibition they've seen.
"As a man I appreciate fashion and I see shoes as reflections as other parts of fashion, for instance hemlines going up and down would also affect the shoe, things of that nature, so I do have a great sensitivity for fashion, so that's why I would be here."
"Oh, I think it does incorporate history and, I mean, you get an understanding of where these designs came from. They're not just something that somebody just dreamed up. They do, actually, correlate with the history, the time period that they came from."
Meanwhile, Sonja Bata is delighted by the visitor response: she tells me that, in fact, many first-time visitors underestimate the significance of footwear, and are stunned by what they learn:
"They tell us that they never thought that shoes were really so interesting, because shoes tell you more about people, their activities, the culture they live in, status in society, then any other object in material culture. They are very surprised."
Eventually I come to the end of my visit but make a point of seeing the celebrity shoes section, especially enjoyed by kids. Somehow though after the moccasins and the European buckles and bows, I'm not quite in the right frame of mind for celebrity shoes, although there's no denying the elegance of flats that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, or white sneakers that belong to the real slim shady, Eminem. One last thing does interest me: does the museum have original Bata shoes from that region of southeast Moravia where Bata's original business was born? Sonja Bata again:
"Well, the shoes that we've got are from the late 19th century - as you know - the Bata company was founded in 1894. And really how Tomas Bata made is money was by offering his shoes at a very low price, and he was able to achieve that by offering shoes for men that were actually textile shoes. They did have artificial soles and they had leather pieces sewn on top, they looked like a 'brogue' or like a normal lace-up shoe. They came in brown and beige and it was really a textile material. So, this is how achieved low prices that people could afford to wear. This was really the 'original' Bata production, when they started to industrialise the workshops in Zlin".
Today, you can buy Bata shoes just about anywhere - but the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto is unique, both in the cityscape and from the moment you cross the threshold. You can find more information at www.batashoemuseum.ca.
