Peabody Essex Museum's 'Ten Footer' Shoe Shop Reactivated This Summer

SALEM, MA — Visitors will be able to watch boots being made by hand this summer at the Peabody Essex Museum's historic Lye-Tapley Shoe Shop on Brown Street.

The shop, also called a "ten footer," will be activated by artist Sarah Madeleine T. Guerin on Fridays and Saturdays through Aug. 29.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors can stop in for free.

The summer series is part of Salem 400+.

Guerin, also known as Saboteuse, builds Western boots by hand from leather and other raw materials using traditional tools. Her work is tied to the architecture of 19th-century Massachusetts "ten footer" shoe shops like Lye-Tapley, which were once a common sight on the North Shore.

Those ground-level neighborhood workshops connected everyday people with the process of shoemaking and shoe repair. Inside, shoemakers, "almost always men," worked with women upper-makers, or "binders," who worked from their homes.

Guerin's focus on ten footers as workshop models led her to research gender roles in shoemaking and gaps in women's history as craftspeople.

That style of shoemaking, and Western bootmaking in particular, nearly disappeared when shoes began to be produced by machine in factories on an industrial scale. While people in the 19th century could watch shoes being made in their communities, many people today are disconnected from the global footwear industry.

When she is not in residence at PEM, Guerin works out of her own replica ten-footer in Wakefield.

The residency gives Salem visitors a chance to see a historic workshop in use and learn more about a North Shore craft tradition.