Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas

My grandfather was a cobbler, somewhere in the streets of Hania, on the island of Crete. One day, I stumbled upon a box of old shoe forms in a vintage shop. I’m not sure if it was the ghost of my grandfather telling me to buy them (and figure out later what to do with them), but I bought them. All of them. About 20 or so.

They sat in the box, under my bed for months. I almost forgot about them until one day, I was scrolling on my iPhone through old photos and found an old photo of me dressed in the traditional foustanella— and those funny shoes with pompoms that I dreaded wearing in public— the tsarouchia.

And l had an idea. My creative juices started flowing and one by one, I started painting and adding accessories, trim and bling to each of these wooden forms, giving each one its own contemporary identity. I made these all one by one during the summer of 2024 while I was in Hania. 

While there, I visited with my mom’s last living sister in Hania, now well into her late 80s and she told me a story about shoes that I remember my mom telling me over and over again every Christmas when I was an unappreciative kid who didn’t get the gifts I wanted. “You know what I got every year as a Christmas present?” She would lecture me. “Every year, I got the soles of my shoes changed. Not new shoes. Your grandfather replaced the soles of my shoes with a new piece of leather. If I was lucky, he would also paint them a new color so I would think I was getting new shoes.” 

Each “Tsarouchi” is hand-painted and glued with unique accessories.