Clogs are a type of footwear made in part or completely from wood. Used in many parts of the world, their forms can vary by culture, but often remained unchanged for centuries within a culture.
Traditional clogs remain in use as protective footwear in agriculture and in some factories and mines. Although they are sometimes negatively associated with cheap and folkloric footwear of farmers and the working class, some types are considered fashion wear today, such as Swedish träskor or Japanese geta.
Clogs are also used in several different styles of dance, where an important feature is the sound they produce against the floor. Clog dancing is one of the fundamental roots of tap dancing, but with tap shoes the taps are free to click against each other and produce a different sound from clogs.
Types
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a clog as a "thick piece of wood", and later as a "wooden soled overshoe" and a "shoe with a thick wooden sole".
Welsh traditional clog maker Trefor Owen identified three main varieties of clogs: wooden upper, wooden soled and overshoes. Wooden upper clogs; are made by hollowing out a lump of solid wood to make a combined upper and lower. Two main variants can be seen: whole foot clogs; where the wooden upper covers the whole of the foot to near the ankle, such as the Dutch klomp. They are also known as "wooden shoes". Whole foot clogs can give sufficient protection to be used as safety footwear without additional reinforcements. half open clogs; where the wooden upper extends over the toes or slightly further, such as the Belgian sabots. The upper is similar in outline to a court shoe. Half open clogs may have additional covering or securing straps in some sort of fabric or leather. Wooden soled clogs; use wood for the sole only. Wooden soled clogs come with a variety of uppers: complete uppers made from leather or similar material, such as English clogs. For more protection, they may have steel toecaps and/or steel reinforcing inserts in the undersides of the soles open sandal type fitting. For example, Japanese geta toe peg styles. For example, Indian paduka Overshoes; are wooden soles with straps designed to be worn over other footwear for protection, commonly known as pattens. Patten style clogs are not used anymore. However the derivative galoshes are common worldwide. These divisions are not fixed: some overshoes look more like whole foot clogs, like Spanish albarca, whilst other wooden soled clogs raise and protect clothing in the way that overshoes do, such as Japanese geta.
The type of upper determines how the clogs are worn. Whole foot clogs need to be close fitting and can be secured by curling the toes. In contrast wooden soled clogs are fastened by laces or buckles on the welt and therefore the toes are relaxed as in shoes. Half open clogs may either be secured like whole foot clogs, or have an additional strap over the top of the foot. Some sandal types, and in particular toe peg styles, are worn more like "flip-flops" and rely on the grip between the big and next toe.
Flexing the foot
As they are primarily made from wood, clogs cannot flex under the ball of the foot as softer shoes do. To allow the foot to roll forward most clogs have the bottom of the toe curved up, known as the cast. Some styles of clogs have "feet", such as Spanish albarca. The clog rotates around the front edge of the front "feet". Some Japanese and Indian clogs have "teeth" or very high pegs attached to the soles. The clog can rotate around the front edge of the front "tooth" as the wearer strides forward. Some medieval pattens were in two pieces, heel through to ball and ball to toes. Joining the two was a leather strip forming a hinge, thus allowing the shoe above to flex. Klompen may have a carefully placed ease (space left around the foot), which allows the foot to bend, and the heel to lift within or out of the clog. Thick, springy wool socks provide flexibility in the fit.
History
The use and prevalence of wooden footwear in prehistoric and ancient times is uncertain, owing both to the ambiguity of surviving records and the difficulty of both preserving and recognizing its remains. Used clogs also tended to be repurposed as firewood.
Some ancient Greeks apparently wore kroúpezai () made of wood. These were known to the Romans as . Both the Greeks and Romans also made sandals by attaching leather straps to wooden soles in various ways.