Martha Davis sustainable shoe line rethinks the future of shoes.

As an industrial product and shoe designer with a 15 year career span, Martha Davis is adept at problem solving. The brief for her residency at San Francisco’s Workshop Residence, a San Francisco-based sustainability incubator for artists and designers, was to create a line of shoes from local resources that weren’t being utilized.

A large order for Fab.com is being packed into boxes at the Dogpatch district Workshop on a warm morning in July, the uniquely beautiful, made-to-last shoes inside are a testament both to the success of Davis’ mission, and to the evolution of a design principal that perfectly illustrates by limiting precious resources.

Already the creator of a successful and highly-coveted shoe line that produced 15 shoe styles per season, Davis took the opportunity of her two-month residency to reconsider the process of making shoes. Having studied the technical aspects of shoe design at the renowned Ars Sutoria Institute in Milan – unlike most designers in the field who rely on sketching- Davis was able to take the ingredients of shoe construction – calculating fit points, making wooden lasts and patterns – and re-imagine a recipe for forward-thinking footwear.

The remarkable results are a collection of three different types of shoes designed, “for the woman interested in challenging convention and taking risks,” describes Davis. Each shoe comes with its own sustainable story.

The Kasha shoe features a heel with colored resin heel and redwood.

The Kasha features a resin heel with two different types of heel, a high and a low version. The style is made from reclaimed wood from a 50 foot piece of old growth redwood that was salvaged from a wildfire. Ordinarily cut off and burnt for biomass, the section was too small for lumber merchants to use. To make it into a 3” heel, Davis created a mold, then poured polyurethane resin that was tinted red, turquoise and black in the workshop. The creative result, “celebrates its inherent characteristics and leaves it in its natural state,” says Davis. “Natural material is inherently very irregular. When you choose to work with it you have to hand select every piece.”

High heel Simone shoe featuring a wedge of black acacia with golden details and a brass plate.

The Simone style features a wood heel made from the round of locally growing acacia and a unique heat-treated spring steel shank that runs the length of the arch. Uncomfortable with typically short shanks that tend to twist and compromise the durability of regular high heels, Davis designed and specially commissioned the shank by a local machine shop that makes car parts.

Adjustable-heel Sugi shoe made with repurposed Douglas fir

The innovative Sugi, which includes a revolutionary adjustable heel height – delighting every woman who has ever wanted to discard her uncomfortable high heels midway thru a night out – were made from repurposed Douglas Fern brake stops used by a Workshop neighbor –  of the iconic cable cars of San Francisco’s Muni system. The stylish shoes feature high quality leather sourced from a Napa-based hide house that is vegetable tanned.

“I found local material easy to find and fairly readily available, the challenge was finding local resources willing to work with it because it was unusual,” said Davis. Once on board, the symbiotic partnerships with local business owners informed Davis’ discovery of the coincidental nature of working within limited resources – you don’t need to force the process, the best collaborations often happen naturally.

The collection, which also features a line of belts is now available online on the Workshop’s recently launched online store. So take a look at the future of shoe design, we promise you might never look at your shoes the same again.

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Textile Artist, Lauren DiCioccio’s latest project with the innovative Workshop Residence in San Francisco uses local Bay Area resources to celebrate the beauty of objects facing obsolescence.

Textile artist Lauren DiCioccio wants you to slow down, and fall in love… with plastic bags. Except these bags aren’t plastic at all. “My work has been about these objects that are beginning to obsolesce, things like newspapers, books and magazines, which are being replaced with technology. So when San Francisco decided to outlaw plastic bags, I started to think about plastic objects that are being replaced for good reasons.”

Her meticulously embroidered organza recreations of throwaway grocery bags are so beautifully rendered that they force you to stop, look closer, and ultimately question if our day-to-day experience of reality is wrong.

Not a bad trick to have up your sleeve when you’re part of San Francisco’s innovative Workshop Residence program, a recently-opened incubator for artists and designers that’s looking to readdress ideas of what a luxury product can be, and transform local patterns of manufacturing.

Working with Braden Weeks Earp, the Workshop’s director, DiCioccio has been developing a functional version of her artwork as part of her residency with the organization, “I’m really excited,” she says. “I think we were very lucky to find some very talented local embroiderers right here on our doorstep.”

In addition to providing the carefully selected artists and designers with living accommodations, workspace and funds, the organization develops and supports relationships with neighborhood manufacturers by sourcing all the materials the participants use locally. In this case, breathing new life into one of the few Bay Area embroidery houses still operating and encouraging greater sustainability in the future.

“The technician who is scanning her stitching in is not just an embroidery artist, he is also a studio artist, says Weeks Earp. “He takes a lot of pride in what he does and is happy to be working on an art project and translating something from an art project into a usable product.”

They are making different takes on the bags ranging from an evening version to a tote style designed to bring your groceries home in. A number agreed upon by the participant will then be made available for sale at the Dogpatch district space and through local retailers and online, along with items from internationally-recognized past participants like Martha Davis and Aurore Thibout. Proceeds are split 50-50 between the artist and The Workshop Residence.

Another part of DiCioccio’s residency has been spent developing a workshop open to the public – this Sunday – to make an embroidered letter. “I’m making trompe-l’œil blue lined writing paper fabric and people can actually mail them to who ever people want to.”

“It will make a nice day playing on a tradition of a sewing circle, meeting new people and sharing the experience of being in the workshop – and they’ll get something really beautiful and thoughtful to send to someone they really care about,” DiCioccio explains.

Like her artwork, which reminds us that the mundane we take for granted becomes something richer upon closer and careful examination, DiCioccio hopes that the opportunity to take the time to sit down and make something will be positive for the local community. ”People forget how much is lost when we don’t make the time to make things anymore. I know, as an artist, I get most of my ideas while I’m doing something meditative, like sewing.”

If the Workshop Residence seems like a new vision for the future, DiCioccio feels it’s a development echoed in the changing fine arts movement.

“There is this new respect for craft again. There’s enough people using the medium in really interesting ways right now that it’s gained steam and has fought its way into being respected again, which naturally trickles down into other parts of society,” says DiCioccio.

Images: Lauren DiCioccio

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