Friederike,

                  from my Klimt series, a range of shoes inspired by the Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) portraits of elaborately dressed Austrian society women. Friederike Maria Beer was a young Viennese society lady who commissioned the painting.  She modelled for it wearing a hand-painted silk dress and a short fur coat.  Klimt, taken with the colourful lining of the coat, asked her to wear it inside out.  The dress and coat fabrics have been interpreted by carving their patterns into the surface of the clay then velvet underglaze colours applied by brush to portray the painterly effects of the image.  The versicolour carpet with its floral motif is alluded to on the sides of the shoes.  The style of the shoe is based on those made by the Italian shoemaker Pietro Yantorny (1874-1936), the self-proclaimed "most expensive shoemaker in the world" who created shoes only for the wealthiest women.