In the daytime, I sometimes walk the streets like a common man, working a white collar public servant job. I drive a Volvo back to my home in Suburbia. Once at home, with the curtains closed, I pull a hidden lever. Smoke pours from hidden tubes in the walls, and a workbench is elevated from the floor. A hammer slowly becomes visible through the fumes, and a leather apron descends from a compartment in the ceiling. This is how I time and time again become… The Secret Cobbler.

This blog is about my journey as a complete and utter layman towards becoming a closet bespoke shoemaker. “The only problem” is that going into this project (as of september 2017), I had no previous experience at all in shoemaking, leather working, or any other related category of artisanship. The closest thing to the crafts I’ve done in the past would be painting and sculpting Warhammer figures (ie, toy soldiers) years ago, and I’ve maybe finished 3-4 small canvas paintings in my lifetime (who hasn’t?). While I was a rather skilled painter of toy soldiers if I may say so myself, I started this project from scratch, aside from an interest in quality shoes and a very general idea about how quality shoes are made.

I’m not doing this to save or make money, and am funding this out of my own pocket – without an expectation or even desire to sell shoes. I’m doing this simply because I love shoes. Hopefully, someone somewhere may find some form of inspiration from what is documented in this blog.