Pattens
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery
Vefa Dogramaci
Pattens, sometimes known as bath clogs, are designed to protect the feet from floors which are wet (as in a hammam, Russian bath , or sauna) or to insulate them from the heat of a floor heated by a hypocaust (as in an ancient Roman bath or a Victorian Turkish bath.
Victorian pattens were simple wooden sandals, rather like flip-flops in appearance, though made of wood, and much closer in style to the modern ones sold today by, for example, Hammam Ltd of Istanbul.
More elaborate models worn by women in nineteenth century Turkey would often raise the feet several inches off the ground and be highly decorated, as in the example shown above, from the Northampton Museum & Art Gallery's internationally important Shoe Collection.
