Cordwainers and Heritage Crafts
In 2025, the Cordwainers supported a new training bursary in shoemaking via Heritage Crafts for an early-career practitioner to gain key shoemaking skills.
Heritage Crafts received applications from aspiring shoemakers keen to learn from some of the greatest makers across the UK. Cordwainer Associate Eleni Kai from Norwich was selected and has used her bursary to train in hand-welted shoemaking with bespoke shoemaker Jim McCormack. Her aspiration is to help re-establish Norwich as a centre for the craft of shoemaking, and to teach others to help keep the shoemaking craft alive for the future. As well as benefitting from the £4,000 bursary funding, Eleni received one-to-one support from Heritage Crafts.
During her training, Eleni learned multiple new skills in time-honoured techniques, including using beeswax, colophony, tallow and pitch to make the wax to cover the thread used in hand shoemaking; cutting and shaping insoles; making long stiffeners to help keep the shape of the shoe in the back and the sides; fitting toe plates; German Seat Construction (mostly used for boots and heavy made soles); Norwegian Construction; and dying coloured threads for sewing uppers.
Cordwainers training bursaries 2026
The Cordwainers are supporting two training bursaries in shoemaking via Heritage Crafts. Judging of the 2026 applications took place in April, with Freeman James Ducker of bespoke shoemakers Carréducker representing the Company on the judging panel.
Of the judging experience, James said:
“I was so pleased to be invited to judge the Heritage Crafts Cordwainers bursaries this year. Being a passionate guardian of the trade of shoemaking, I was delighted to see this initiative and to be involved. Both last year’s recipient Eleni (a previous student at Carréducker) and the two recipients from this year will get the kickstart they need to develop their shoemaking careers. This is such a vital addition to our mission to preserve handsewn shoemaking and bring the next generation of shoemakers into this wonderful trade. A lifetime of fulfilment as shoemakers awaits them.”
The winners of the 2026 training bursaries are Ella Clifton-Gould and Olive Shaw.
Ella Clifton-Gould from Gloucestershire has spent two years training in shoemaking, including specialising in orthopaedic footwear at Tutty’s Handmade Shoes and studying in Germany. Her bursary will fund her place on the UAL Footwear Summer School at the London College of Fashion under the tutelage of Nafi Mustafa, covering fees, travel and accommodation.
Olive Shaw from Northampton works as a trainee bespoke shoemaker and assistant at Gaziano & Girling and previously served as a course leader for footwear manufacturing apprenticeships. Her bursary will fund eight intensive sessions of one-to-one training in traditional wooden last making with Robert Elek, alongside essential materials, tools and travel.
Heritage Crafts complies and publishes the Red List of Endangered Crafts which uses a system of four categories of risk to assess the viability of heritage crafts – clog making and pointe shoe making are currently listed as ‘critically endangered’ which means that they are at serious risk of no longer being practised in the UK; and shoe and boot making (handsewn) and shoe and boot last and tree making are currently listed as ‘endangered’ which means that there are currently sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation, but there are serious concerns about the craft’s ongoing viability.