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Lynn Macnab hangs her customers’ feet — hundreds of pairs of them — from the ceiling of her workshop outside her home near Dalkeith, Ont., an hour’s drive east of Ottawa.
Well, not their feet, exactly, but the lasts — the moulds she uses to custom-make the cowboy and other boots that form the backbone of Oshonto, her leatherworking business. “The last shall be first,” she says, a shoemaker’s joke, and credo perhaps, that is difficult to imagine getting old until you think about it for too long.
On each pair of lasts is written the customer’s name, a fascinating database, and she points out one unassuming pair that has a slightly built-up insole and shaved-down sides where the feet are widest. Written in black marker on a strip of masking tape along one heel is the name “Jean Chrétien”.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
The cowboy boots Macnab made with those lasts were a surprise gift from the former prime minister’s staff when he left office in 2003, and were made from beaver tail, bison, boar and French calf. Macnab was invited to an intimate dinner at 24 Sussex Dr. to present them to him.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
Most of her clients are not, of course, heads of state. They are cowboys and farmers and athletes and businesspeople, the majority of them sharing in common little more than feet with dimensions that don’t quite fit what’s on the shelves at The Shoe Company. Some have creative ideas that require the skills of someone like Macnab: one customer, for example, ordered as a gift for her husband a pair of snakeskin boots with the heads of pythons attached, on the front, staring up at their owner. Some other clients take part in historical re-enactments and want the sort of straight boots — no left or right — that were common in the 1800s. She’s made boots with the logos of NHL teams on them. One, well-off, client flew Macnab to Oregon to measure his feet for a pair of polo boots. Customers can expect to pay between $1,200 and $1,500 for a pair of custom boots, and about $650 for a shortcut pair. Some special orders can fetch as much as $5,000.
Some of Lynn Macnab’s custom-made boots are displayed in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
She learned her craft in Alberta, but a marriage there that didn’t take and a father here who lay sick and dying brought her back to Ontario in 1995. Her father died before her plane touched down in Ottawa, and Macnab moved into the family home — an 1832 log farmhouse that long ago belonged to a magistrate. Within a year, she was making boots and other leathercrafts.
She loves maintaining old traditions and techniques. She moved a pair of small, old wooden abandoned houses that once were home to the families of 23 and 11 children, respectively, to her property to serve as a workshop and tannery. Inside the workshop is a 104-year-old harness machine; she’s only its second owner.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
And she tans animal skins using the oldest, perhaps most labour-intensive, method: brain tanning, in which, after all the fat and flesh is scraped from an animal’s hide, it is stretched and its brain rubbed into it, preserving the skin and turning the rawhide into leather. She also stretches the hides over woodsmoke to aid the process. The methods go back thousands of years, and were how early Native Americans tanned hides.
“There’s a substance in the brain — lecithin — that’s a natural tanning agent,” says Macnab. “And every animal except for two — the buffalo and elephant — have brains large enough to tan their own skins.”
Dalkeith bootmaker Lynn Macnab tans animal skins the old-fashioned way: using the animals’ own brains. Here she shows the brain of a white-tailed deer.
She’s tanned most every local animal you can think of, except for dogs, including horses, cows, martens, fishers, deer, raccoons, otter, beaver, and even a neighbour’s pet cat. “People around here know that I do this, so I never know what’s going to show up in my mailbox.” She uses the fur for such things as mittens or trim on slippers or mukluks.
Meanwhile, the brains that she runs through her blender are stored in her kitchen freezer until she’s ready to use them. “My kids learned long ago not to eat anything pink,” she only half jokes.
And in her personal museum of artifacts is a particularly grisly one: a change purse, over a century old, made from the skin of a human. The story that accompanies it is that in 1904 a McGill University medical student from the area, Addie McCrimmon, took a piece of a cadaver’s back, put it in a barrel at his grandfather’s tannery, and later had it made into the intriguing wallet.
Lynn Macnab holds a century-old change purse made of human skin.
A conservationist, it’s her conviction that every part of an animal should be used. This tenet has led to another peculiar product line sitting alongside her cowboy boots, shoes, sandals and lambskin sex restraints: wall hangings, plant stands, talking sticks and lamps made of penises. A recent visit to her workshop revealed an impressively sizable buffalo appendage. Most of the customers interested in her penile handiwork, she says, are women.
But the 50-year-old Macnab’s bread-and-butter remains the cowboy boots, and despite having no website and little advertising beyond word of mouth, they keep her busy, year-round. When she’s not giving leatherwork and tanning workshops, which she does about a half-dozen times a year, she can make about two pairs of cowboy boots in a week.
The exterior of Lynn Macnab’s Dalkeith, Ont. workshop is decorated with old cowboy boots.
“I love that they’re an old boot,” she says. “I like that every part of the boot has a function, and at one point there was a reason for it all: the pointy toe, the low heel, the high heel. The low heel was for guys who were getting off their horse and stopping a calf. A guy who was riding all day had a higher heel. A guy with a pointy toe had to get his foot in the stirrup real fast.
“And what I love about the whole thing is that I have to make something that looks nice but also has to fit. So it’s not just making a piece of art: it’s a functional piece of art. For me, that’s the thing: it’s got to be really nice, and it’s got to be functional.
“And I’m keeping an old tradition alive. I love history and keeping old things alive.”
bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
Well, not their feet, exactly, but the lasts — the moulds she uses to custom-make the cowboy and other boots that form the backbone of Oshonto, her leatherworking business. “The last shall be first,” she says, a shoemaker’s joke, and credo perhaps, that is difficult to imagine getting old until you think about it for too long.
On each pair of lasts is written the customer’s name, a fascinating database, and she points out one unassuming pair that has a slightly built-up insole and shaved-down sides where the feet are widest. Written in black marker on a strip of masking tape along one heel is the name “Jean Chrétien”.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
The cowboy boots Macnab made with those lasts were a surprise gift from the former prime minister’s staff when he left office in 2003, and were made from beaver tail, bison, boar and French calf. Macnab was invited to an intimate dinner at 24 Sussex Dr. to present them to him.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
Most of her clients are not, of course, heads of state. They are cowboys and farmers and athletes and businesspeople, the majority of them sharing in common little more than feet with dimensions that don’t quite fit what’s on the shelves at The Shoe Company. Some have creative ideas that require the skills of someone like Macnab: one customer, for example, ordered as a gift for her husband a pair of snakeskin boots with the heads of pythons attached, on the front, staring up at their owner. Some other clients take part in historical re-enactments and want the sort of straight boots — no left or right — that were common in the 1800s. She’s made boots with the logos of NHL teams on them. One, well-off, client flew Macnab to Oregon to measure his feet for a pair of polo boots. Customers can expect to pay between $1,200 and $1,500 for a pair of custom boots, and about $650 for a shortcut pair. Some special orders can fetch as much as $5,000.
Some of Lynn Macnab’s custom-made boots are displayed in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
She learned her craft in Alberta, but a marriage there that didn’t take and a father here who lay sick and dying brought her back to Ontario in 1995. Her father died before her plane touched down in Ottawa, and Macnab moved into the family home — an 1832 log farmhouse that long ago belonged to a magistrate. Within a year, she was making boots and other leathercrafts.
She loves maintaining old traditions and techniques. She moved a pair of small, old wooden abandoned houses that once were home to the families of 23 and 11 children, respectively, to her property to serve as a workshop and tannery. Inside the workshop is a 104-year-old harness machine; she’s only its second owner.
Bootmaker Lynn Macnab in her workshop near Dalkeith, Ont.
And she tans animal skins using the oldest, perhaps most labour-intensive, method: brain tanning, in which, after all the fat and flesh is scraped from an animal’s hide, it is stretched and its brain rubbed into it, preserving the skin and turning the rawhide into leather. She also stretches the hides over woodsmoke to aid the process. The methods go back thousands of years, and were how early Native Americans tanned hides.
“There’s a substance in the brain — lecithin — that’s a natural tanning agent,” says Macnab. “And every animal except for two — the buffalo and elephant — have brains large enough to tan their own skins.”
Dalkeith bootmaker Lynn Macnab tans animal skins the old-fashioned way: using the animals’ own brains. Here she shows the brain of a white-tailed deer.
She’s tanned most every local animal you can think of, except for dogs, including horses, cows, martens, fishers, deer, raccoons, otter, beaver, and even a neighbour’s pet cat. “People around here know that I do this, so I never know what’s going to show up in my mailbox.” She uses the fur for such things as mittens or trim on slippers or mukluks.
Meanwhile, the brains that she runs through her blender are stored in her kitchen freezer until she’s ready to use them. “My kids learned long ago not to eat anything pink,” she only half jokes.
And in her personal museum of artifacts is a particularly grisly one: a change purse, over a century old, made from the skin of a human. The story that accompanies it is that in 1904 a McGill University medical student from the area, Addie McCrimmon, took a piece of a cadaver’s back, put it in a barrel at his grandfather’s tannery, and later had it made into the intriguing wallet.
Lynn Macnab holds a century-old change purse made of human skin.
A conservationist, it’s her conviction that every part of an animal should be used. This tenet has led to another peculiar product line sitting alongside her cowboy boots, shoes, sandals and lambskin sex restraints: wall hangings, plant stands, talking sticks and lamps made of penises. A recent visit to her workshop revealed an impressively sizable buffalo appendage. Most of the customers interested in her penile handiwork, she says, are women.
But the 50-year-old Macnab’s bread-and-butter remains the cowboy boots, and despite having no website and little advertising beyond word of mouth, they keep her busy, year-round. When she’s not giving leatherwork and tanning workshops, which she does about a half-dozen times a year, she can make about two pairs of cowboy boots in a week.
The exterior of Lynn Macnab’s Dalkeith, Ont. workshop is decorated with old cowboy boots.
“I love that they’re an old boot,” she says. “I like that every part of the boot has a function, and at one point there was a reason for it all: the pointy toe, the low heel, the high heel. The low heel was for guys who were getting off their horse and stopping a calf. A guy who was riding all day had a higher heel. A guy with a pointy toe had to get his foot in the stirrup real fast.
“And what I love about the whole thing is that I have to make something that looks nice but also has to fit. So it’s not just making a piece of art: it’s a functional piece of art. For me, that’s the thing: it’s got to be really nice, and it’s got to be functional.
“And I’m keeping an old tradition alive. I love history and keeping old things alive.”
bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
