I pre-ordered the first volume of Marcell Mrsán’s The Big Book Book of Footwear Uppers and received it last month. I’ve done my first read through, taking notes, and thought I’d share some thoughts.
You can find the table of contents on the wiki. In keeping with my usual practice, I won’t be sharing all my notes, since this book is still very much for sale. I know this book is pricey, like many shoemaking boots. But I don’t want to undercut the authors, their helpers, or heirs who keep works available.
Overall
The Big Book of Footwear Uppers 1 offers a guided path through a series of styles specifically chosen as a progression, increasing in complexity, building one on the next, sprinkling in general concepts, tips, and lots and lots of diagrams. However, it’s not a comprehensive system or reference work for patterning. Some especially introductory chapters felt like filler, and some finer points and diagrams were hard for me to understand.
There are some typos in numbering the chapters in table of contents, but I don’t judge that too harshly. It’s a self-published production by a smart guy working in a second language, after all. We English speakers are lucky to have him.
The printing is excellent, and many color photos and diagrams come through clearly. It’s a paperback, but the paper is substantial. All the type is sans-serif, but it’s sharp and clear.
Structure
The book starts with a small handful of introductory chapters, then devotes a chapter each to eight styles. Each style chapter begins with a cover page and a few paragraphs of historical background, proceeds through diagrams for upper and lining, and ends with captioned photos of the steps of the closing process. I very much got the sense that Marcell went through the process of patterning and making each of the shoes from scratch for the book.
Geometric Method
There was a point I found a bit more frustrating: early on, Marcell emphasizes the importance of the “geometric system” of Robert Knöfel. He even devotes three-quarters of a page to a kind of elegy for him. But he never actually spells out which reference lines and calculations make up the all-important geometric method, even as he extolls it as the basis of all modern patterning.
Time and time again, I found myself wishing I was holding a book on the original “Winckel-System”. It’s possible that’s somewhere in the Lehrbuch der Fußbekleidungskunst, and I just haven’t parsed through the German to find it yet. Or perhaps it wasn’t entirely written down, and has made it to print only indirectly, through pattern books by those trained in a tradition of his teachings.