Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

My “Boot Scootin’ History” exhibition at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, Virginia is over, and I picked up all the exhibition boots and materials when I was in Nashville. Of all the things I brought safely home — expensive and irreplaceable boots and memorabilia — it is these two pieces that I’m most happy to be reunited with. The booklet is the liner notes from the Bear Family Louvin Brothers boxed set and it’s signed to me by Charlie Louvin. The piece of leather is the original piece that I sewed the day I went to Jay Griffith’s boot shop and applied for a job stitching tops.

Typically I use metallic gold and silver leather for small inlaid accents; today I learned that stitching on silver leather is hard because the sewing machine light glares on it.

Introducing: “The Wild Side of Life”

I will deliver these to a musician in Nashville later this month and I hope they have a long and wild life on stage.

The beginning of silver shoes with turquoise and pink butterflies

I’ve pulled the lasts out of this pair of boots and that, my friends, is cause for celebration.

Here’s my most recent interview, with Homo Faber.

https://www.homofaber.com/en/artisans/lisa_sorrell-shoemaking-guthrie_ok

Introducing: “Ghost Riders in the Sky”

Cowboy boot soles are traditionally pegged in the shank area with little square wooden shoe pegs. Even though I sometimes make shoes now, like this pair, I build them on cowboy boot lasts and finish them like cowboy boots. Did you know that in the mid-1800s wood shoe pegs were so cheap and so plentiful that feed merchants would adulterate cattle feed with shoe pegs? Compare that to today, when we have one maker of wood shoe pegs left in the entire world.

The boots in the book (“Art of the Boot” by Tyler Beard) image were made by Lucchese; Gene Autry had a pair although the boots in the image aren’t his. I have always particularly disliked them, so one day I thought, “I wonder if I’d like them better if I used them as inspiration for a shoe?!?”

The answer is no. I still don’t like them. However, I used perfectly good alligator on these boots, and alligator costs just as much on boots I don’t like and doing all the work takes just as much time on boots I don’t like, so I will finish them. I supposed every artist occasionally creates something that doesn’t turn out as they imagined. I do really like that longhorn on the toe though!

Oh, and the shoelaces are all kinds of wrong. I can’t unlace them until I remove the last, but I will be using different shoelaces as soon as possible.

Introducing: “How Blue”

Butterflies are a common and traditional theme for cowboy boot top designs, probably because their outstretched wings fill the space so neatly. Usually they are stylized, drawn for shape and color more than accuracy. This butterfly, however, is the endangered Karner Blue butterfly of the American northeast. It feeds exclusively on the Wild Blue Lupine which is inlaid on either side of the butterfly.