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Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas
Pappas Market

Tsarouchia by Gregory Pappas

Regular price $79.00 $0.00 Unit price per

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.