This post is part of a series revealing the table of contents of upcoming Issue Twenty. As is our custom, we’ll be discussing one article per weekday in order to give you a taste of what is to come.
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Luke Sellers – “The Clog-Maker’s Craft: Europe’s Living Tradition”
Some handcrafts become so entwined with the culture of a place that you can’t help but hold them inseparably. Such is the case with the wooden clogs, or klompen, of the Netherlands. Amsterdam souvenir shops are replete with a variety of wooden-shoe-shaped objects to fill tourists’ suitcases, but the authentic and ancient Dutch craft is still alive in this tiny country.
For Issue Twenty, 2025 M&T Craft Research Grant recipient Luke Sellers traveled to the Netherlands to study this iconic craft. Once a common form across Europe with many subtle regional variations, only a handful of clog-makers remain. One such maker is Gerald Getkate, an artisan passionate about passing down the skills and knowledge required to keep the craft going for future generations. Sellers accompanied Getkate to several workshops, where apprentices are taught the intricacies of design and the use of the very unique clog-maker’s toolkit: axe, stock knife, spoon bits. What he observed was not some obscure, dying art, propped up for nostalgia’s sake. “None of the work going on around me felt performative, antiquated, or outmoded,” he writes. “It felt normal.”
Sellers makes the case that this is what differentiates living crafts from dead ones. There is real infrastructure in place for the tools, the materials, and the education needed to allow clog-making to survive. And with passionate teachers like Getkate and others sharing their zeal and knowledge with their apprentices, the future of the craft looks bright.
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