Artist: Maria Gordon
Title: The Shoemaker
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 30,5 cm x 16,7 cm x 2 cm / 12x6.5x0.8 inches
Ships from Spain
This artwork is inspired by a personal version of Chekhov's tale "The Shoemaker and the Devil". The story unfolds as follows:
Once upon a time, in a dusty and forgotten village, there was a shoemaker known for her extraordinary ability to craft the finest and most beautiful shoes. Every pair that left her workshop was a work of art, fitting perfectly to the foot of whoever wore them.
One day, the shoemaker received an unusual commission: a mysterious client requested a pair of custom-made shoes with specifications so precise and detailed that no one else would have dared to accept the task. Flattered by the challenge, the shoemaker agreed.
The client, who never showed up in person, communicated only through letters sealed with an unfamiliar symbol. However, the pay was generous, and she was ambitious.
The first pair was delivered in the dead of night, left on the shoemaker’s doorstep, and by the next morning, a new letter awaited her with another request. The details were even more intricate: the buttons were to be made of dark, carved mother-of-pearl, the small heels crafted from Silent Birch wood, and the stitches sewn with whale bristles.
The shoemaker worked day and night, her obsession with fulfilling the client’s demands growing with every order. At first, the shoes were simply difficult to make, but as time passed, the requests became nearly impossible. Nevertheless, the shoemaker always found a way to meet them.
With each completed pair of shoes, the shoemaker noticed changes in her workshop. The shadows stretched longer, the sounds of the outside world grew muffled, and a strange mist seemed to surround her as she worked. She began to have visions—countless pairs of legs would appear in the corners of her workshop, and her dreams were haunted by a figure that relentlessly pursued her.
Still, she could not stop. Every night, she found a new letter, and every morning, her desire to satisfy the client grew stronger than the day before. She felt that if she failed in even the smallest detail, something terrible would happen, though she could not say what.
One night, after finishing the most complicated pair she had ever made, the shoemaker collapsed from exhaustion. In her dreams, the mysterious client finally revealed himself: She saw a strange creature wearing all the shoes she had ever made, singing with her own voice:
"How sweet to be born from dreams,
I was but a shadowed gleam,
And now I stand, a woman grand
Your endless toil has made it all.”
She woke with a scream, only to find in her ink-stained hands a half-written letter. She realized she no longer needed any more orders; she had fed the creature off her effort and obsession, causing the creature to grow until it had become a part of her.
The shoemaker tried to stop thinking about the client, but the desire to create, to perfect, to meet his demands, continued to torment her. Days later, the townspeople found her sitting in the empty workshop, muttering about shoes no one else could see, entirely trapped in an endless cycle of creation for a client who no longer existed but in her mind.
Since then, it is said that her spirit still haunts the workshop, searching to complete one last pair of shoes she can never finish.
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