Shoe scratches
A Schuhabkratzer , even shoe scratches , doormat , Stiefelabstreifer , scrapers (Switzerland), shoe scraper or boot scrapers (Social media), is a rigidly fixed scraper made of metal for the cleaning of shoe soles and boots profiles. In the days of horse-drawn carts and unpaved roads, it was an indispensable cleaning device, installed near the entrance of buildings. Nowadays, they are used to remove typical road contamination such as leaves and snow or, in large animal husbandry, soil and dung.
Areas of application
The shoe scraper is the first step in cleaning a traditional dirt lock in private and commercial buildings. In the old days, when horses and horse-drawn carts ensured mobility, the roads were muddy and footpaths were loamy trails, the shoe scraper was a suitable means of scraping leftovers of horse manure, leaves, mud and snow from the sole and the sides of the sole. It was found on many buildings. In agriculture, too, where farmers controlled the plows by hand and worked on animals in the stable or in the pasture, they were part of the dirt lock at the farm entrance to the house.
Today, the importance of shoe scratching in cities has shrunk to the removal of leaves in autumn and snow in winter. They are still used on farms with pasture right next to the house and riding stables. More recent are portable shoe scratches.
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Installation location and appearance
A shoe scraper is usually firmly attached within foot reach of a building entrance door, an entrance step or an entrance staircase or directly on the entrance step. But it can also be anchored in a bed within reach of a paved path in front of a building entrance. Contemporary portable scratches with a handle bar for cleaning outsoles on the go, e.g. B. after a walk in the forest before getting into a vehicle (carriage, car) are rare these days. In the first automobiles at the beginning of the 20th century, the running boards in front of the car doors were sometimes equipped with a shoe scraper.
On buildings, shoe scrapes were firmly cemented into the floor, embedded in stairs or plastered into the house walls. In the case of longer entrance stairs, the scrapers were integrated into wrought iron banisters. Nowadays there are versions that can be screwed to the floor or wall.
The historically handed down shoe scrapers are made of wrought iron, cast iron, sheet steel or steel wire. Nowadays they are also available as decorative elements in cast aluminum and cast bronze.
Freestanding shoe scratches were often H-shaped wrought iron scratches about 18 centimeters wide protruding from the floor or step. There is only one shoe position for cleaning the sole and sides. You cannot slip out of the cleaning position. The high side struts also allowed the concave area of a heel to be cleaned up.
A free-standing shoe scraper can also be just a rectangular sheet of metal a few centimeters high. A simple version is an angular bent wire approx. 10-15 mm thick. In both constructions, the outsole, the left and the right side of the sole are cleaned in a different foot position.
On building walls, it can be a flat iron that protrudes horizontally from the facade and is possibly supported by a strut from below. The upper edge is partially recessed in the width of the sole, so that edges are created for cleaning the lateral sole. A semicircular or angularly curved flat steel plastered on both sides may also have been used on buildings. These models protruding from the wall nowadays often protrude into the traffic areas of cities, because the narrow front gardens with climbing plants have been converted into sidewalks in favor of wider streets or to separate cars and pedestrians. Free-standing models or models protruding from walls are now perceived as tripping hazards and a risk of injury.
There were also shoe scrapers embedded in the masonry for building walls, which ended almost vertically with the facade. For this purpose, they have a small niche in the masonry behind the iron strut with a sloping floor to provide space for the shoe and to transport the removed foreign bodies out of the wall via the sloping plane.
In Victorian times there were ready-made cast-iron shoe scrapers with frames and niches that could be mortared into the wall. These complete versions were particularly common in the then wealthy England and France.
Seldom have the shoe scrapers been designed by architects to match the facade design, as by the architect Albert Roosenboom (1871–1943) on the Beukman House in Parisian Art Nouveau.
With high entrance stairs, the shoe scraper can also be integrated into the wrought iron railing.
function
With the horizontal middle piece , often made of flat steel, thick adhesions of snow, earth, leaves, clay, manure or horse droppings are scraped off the outsole. In the area of the shoe joint between the heel (heel) and the half-sole (forefoot), the adhering material can first be punched out and the remains scraped off. The vertical scraping surfaces remove dirt and snow from the side of the sole. In the case of H-shaped shoe scratches, the concave area on men's shoe heels can be cleaned with the raised tips .
What remains is the dirt that is stuck in the gaps between heavily profiled soles. This can be loosened and knocked out over a grating by stepping on it or it can be cleaned using coarse dirt floor mats with strong bristles.
Shoe scratches in significant places
On the top step of the entrance stairs of Goethe's house in Weimar (1782–1832) there is a shoe scraper made from a rectangular plate. Next to the entrance step to Goethe's garden house near the Ilm in Weimar, a bent metal wire is anchored in the ground. The Art Nouveau shoe scraper designed by A. Roosenboom can be seen at the Beukman house in Elsene. At the office of the British Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street in London, there are two ornate cast-iron Victorian shoe scratches symmetrically to the right and left of the door. In Greenwich Village, shoe scrapers are integrated into the banisters of some historic townhouses, e.g. B. Christopher Street , Gay Street and Waverly Place.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Fighting the excrement: Shoe scratches still stick out from old facades. In: northern Bavaria. Verlag Nürnberger Presse Druckhaus Nürnberg, October 24, 2010, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c shoe scratches. In: Bockenheim-Aktiv.de. CFS Consulting For Success GmbH, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d Lisa (nickname): many names, many forms. In: Beletage: Altbau-Magazin. Google inc (Blogger.com), July 5, 2012, accessed March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Discovered while running with diabetes - but what is it? In: DiabSite Diabetes Weblog. Helga Uphoff, October 21, 2012, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Britta Smyrak: From pizza to pastrami. In: looping. Britta Smyrak, March 2017, accessed March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Thomas Robbin: image no. 15763 - Goethe's house in Weimar. In: ARCHITEKTURbildARCHIV. Architektur-Bildarchiv, March 21, 2011, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Geolina163: File: Goethe's Garden House 2019 6.jpg. In: Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation, May 23, 2019, accessed March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b shoe scraper. In: Fürth. City of Fürth, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Christiane Dreher: Signs from earlier. In: Au fil des mots. September 17, 2015, accessed June 14, 2020 .
- ↑ The scrapers on the Basel housings. In: altbasel.ch. Roger Jean Rebmann, 2006, accessed March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Guide Art Nouveau à Bruxelles. In: vazyvite.com. April 17, 2010, accessed March 26, 2020 (French).
- ↑ Bernd Noack: The shoe scraper. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. NZZ digital, April 20, 2015, accessed on March 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Don Ritter: Cities 101: Locating Victorian Boot Scrapers on the Streets of NYC. In: untrapped new york. untrapped cities, August 17, 2016, accessed March 26, 2020 .
