FootJoy
Since 1856
Black on Black Full Wing-Tip Brogue Oxford Spectator
Special Order- Street Shoe- Circa 1980
Euro 480

This is a “Black on Black” Full Wing-Tip Oxford Brogue “Spectator” with Cap, Saddle and Heel-Cap in smooth Box-calf, over Scotch-Grain, a immensely successful design, fancy but ever discreet, suggestive of the custom-made shoe -it was in fact a special order from FootJoy’s Brockton plant. With the closing in 2008 of the last American-based FootJoy plant, this extraordinarily lovely and luxurious street model based on the famous identical golf model is most likely among the very last we will ever see again.

Golfers the world round know that the finest traditional golf shoes are made and have been made throughout the 20th century by one shoemaker,The FootJoy Company. FootJoy began its operation as the Burt & Packard Shoe Company founded in Brockton Massachusetts in 1857. In 1927 the company took the name of its premier line of shoes, the FootJoy. Since then they have been the leading golf shoe on the PGA tour, the # 1 selling golf shoe in England and the undisputed leader in the manufacture of Golf Shoes in the world. The vintage and antique FootJoys represent the pinnacle of craftsmanship and luxury, and are highly prized by collectors and aficionado of fine street and golf shoes.This and two or three other Lizard FootJoys among my listings are perhaps the finest and the rarest golf and street shoes to be seen outside of a museum….and certainly the most beautiful. The skins are artfully arranged, with fine and coarse patterned pieces distributed for maximum effect, and all perfectly matched between shoes.

I have learned that in March 2008 FootJoy closed it last American-based factory in Brockton, Massachusetts. While the firm continues to produce large numbers of sneaker-like golf shoes in its off-shore facilities, this last bastion of old-world craftsmanship in golf shoes is relegated to history, and with it the last source for us of special-order lizard and other exotic-skinned golf and street shoes, the finest in the world. For the moment, a small coterie of craftsmen remain to perform repairs but the 103 highly skilled craftsmen, some of whom had worked in the Field Street Factory since the introduction of the “Classic” line of shoes in 1959, are gone. Shoemaking became a major industry in Brockton in the 1880s, and remained so well into the 20th century, but with the exception of the FootJoy plant, shoemaking has already been extinct in Brockton for decades. Once more the painstaking traditional Goodyear welted shoe is driven out of the market by the far cheaper cemented shoe.