18th Century Pattens
Last updated: Jan 5, 2024
Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language defines a “patten” as
A ſhoe of wood with an iron ring, worn under the common ſhoe by women.
The V&A provides some additional context:
Pattens were worn to lift the shoe out of the dirt and damp. Being somewhat heavy and clumsy, they were mainly used by working-class or country women.
Pehr Kalm remarks on the use of pattens in 1748 in his Account of His Visit to England:
English women generally have the character of keeping floors, steps, and such things very clean. They are not particularly pleased if anyone comes in with dirty shoes, and soils their clean floors, but he ought first to rub his shoes and feet very clean, if he would be at peace with them in other things. Hence it is that outside every door there stands a fixed iron, on which the men scrape the mould, and other dirt off their shoes before they step in. The women leave in the passage their pattins, this is, a kind of wooden shoes which stand on a high iron ring. Into these wooden shoes they thrust their ordinary leather, or stuff, shoes (when they go out) and so go by that means quite free from all dirt into the room. In the hall or passage, and afterwards at every door, though there were ever so many one within the other, there lies a mat, or something else, to still more carefully rub the soil off the shoes, so that it is never, in short, sufficiently rubbed off.
Several of the depictions of women wearing pattens (also linked below) are of maids who are using mops.
- Fitting & Proper has a pair of pattens, c. 1700-1800, “wooden soles riveted to wrought iron platforms with straps of brown leather lined with off-white wool”
- 17th/18th century flat-soled patten
- A broken piece of a patten found in an old stone house in England
- Met 2009.300.1485a, b, a pair of European pattens
- DHM (the lower two examples; the upper one is medieval)
- MoL A3635, “patten with wooden sole, two black leather straps and curved metal ring base,” 1710-1720; see also Foreshore finds: treasures from the Thames
- V&A T.43&A-1932, a pair of pattens made in Great Britain in the 1720s to 1730s; “These pattens … have pointed toes to fit a fashionable woman’s shoe and a depression at the back where a small heel could sit. The shoe would have been fastened into the patten by means of ribbon-laced latchets. All this, and the fact that the latchets are covered in velvet, suggests that the patterns were worn by someone of considerable wealth.”
- Manchester 1922.1795, c. 1750-1790; “Black leather with oval iron stands, pink silk ribbon bows, pointed toes.”
- A City Shower (detail) by Edward Penny, 1764
- The Unfortunate Beau, 1772
- Piety in pattens, or, Timbertoe on tiptoe, 1773
- Patty, 1783
- SONS 2739, Connecticut, late 18th century
- Met 2009.300.1640a, b, a pair of pattens made in America in the late 18th century
- Returning from a rout on a rainy night, 1797
- Two pairs of pattens from the late 18th or 19th century
- MFA 44.571a-b, French, early 19th century; “Dark brown leather straps buckle over instep; leather quarters. Square toe. Wood sole mounted on iron ring.”
- PMA 1903-68, United States, early 19th century
