A wooden shoe form is an oddly intimate object. It has the shape of a foot without belonging to anyone you can name. Its purpose was practical: to help a craftsperson turn leather into something another person could wear into the world.
Gregory Pappas’s grandfather was a cobbler in Hania, Crete. He worked with wooden forms, shaping shoes by hand. Years later, Gregory found a dusty box of old forms in a vintage shop and bought the whole box before knowing what he would make with them.
Then his aunt showed him a childhood photograph. There he was in a traditional fustanella, wearing red tsarouchia with pom-poms. The box had found its next purpose.
During the summer of 2024, in Hania, Gregory transformed those old forms into his own interpretations of the tsarouchi. Paint, tassels, trim, beads and charms gave each one a different personality. A tool associated with making shoes became a sculpture about the memories shoes could carry.
There is an important distinction in that story. These were forms discovered in a shop; they are not presented as the actual tools his grandfather used. The connection is through the craft, and through the way an object can bring a family history into focus.
Look closely at one of the finished pieces and both lives remain visible. You can see the shoe, but also the sturdy wooden shape beneath the decoration. The new work has left room for the old purpose.
That is what makes these sculptures so personal. They bring together a grandfather’s occupation, a child’s costume and an adult’s impulse to make something with his hands. Three moments, meeting in an object small enough to put on a shelf.