In Memory of Sonja Bata

February 22, 2018 | Bill V.

Sonja Bata, elegant, sophisticated, passionate, knowledgeable, generous, shoe collector extraordinaire, astute in business matters and also a philanthropist has just died.

Sonja Bata and Terry Fox running shoe 1987 Toronto Star photo

Sonja Bata with Terry Fox sneaker, Toronto Star photo 1987

Swiss born she was married to Czech shoe magnate Tomas J Bat̕a. WWII and the post war communists forced the Bata's to leave Europe and settle in Canada where they rebuilt a global shoe empire - not to mention the small Ontario factory town of Batawa. They also built a classic mid-century modern head office in Toronto with architect John Perkins, just off the DVP (which has been torn down and replaced by an equally wonderful Aga Khan Museum). While Bata shoes closed in Canada it is still very active world wide, especially in India.

Sonja Bata and size 16 boot - Toronto Star photo 1981

But it was Mrs Bata's passion for shoe collecting and the Bata's generosity which lead to the creation of one of Toronto's finest small museums - The Bata Shoe Museum. Designed by Raymond Moriyama (he also designed the Toronto Reference Library) - some would waggishly say it looked like a shoe box, with the lid at a slight angle.

Bata Shoe Museum - from the Moriyama Teshima site

I just visited the Bata Shoe Museum a few months ago and was reminded how good the architectural and also the curatorial design display work was.

The permanent collection is fascinating overview of 4000 years of history from around the world. The special exhibits I saw on Indigenous Peoples of the World footwear and also Victorian footwear and fashion were superb. The Batas were sponsoring research and collecting Indigenous materials well ahead of the curve.

Silver Paduka Jaipur India (photo Bill V).

1970s platform shoes (photo Bill V).

Chinese 19th century shoes for bound feet (photo Bill V).

Chestnut crushing clogs, 19th century France (photo Bill V).

1970s Suede shoes - (photo Bill V).

If you want to read further about some of the exhibits from the Bata Shoe Museum you may these books:

Out of the box: the rise of sneaker culture: "showcases sneakers, from the mid-nineteenth century to sports performance breakthroughs, to present-day cultural icons. Drawn from the collection of the Bata Shoe Museum and significant private collectors, museums, and archives--this selection is richly contextualized with interviews and essays by design innovators, sneaker collectors, and cultural historians, creating a backdrop of the technical innovation, fashion trends, social history, and marketing campaigns that shaped the form over the past two centuries."

Every step a lotus: shoes for bound feet:"In Every Step a Lotus, Dorothy Ko embarks on a fascinating exploration of the practice of footbinding in China, explaining its origins, purpose, and spread before the nineteenth century. She uses women's own voices to reconstruct the inner chambers of a Chinese house where women with bound feet lived and worked. Focusing on the material aspects of footbinding and shoemaking--the tools needed, the procedures, the wealth of symbolism in the shoes, and the amazing regional variations in style--she contends that footbinding was a reasonable course of action for a woman who lived in a Confucian culture that placed the highest moral value on domesticity, motherhood, and handwork. Her absorbing, superbly detailed, and beautifully written book demonstrates that in the women's eyes, footbinding had less to do with the exotic or the sublime than with the mundane business of having to live in a woman's body in a man's world."

Heights of fashion: a history of the elevated shoe: "Drawing on historical sources, paintings and prints, this volume explores how and why shoes or boots with high heels came into common use. It considers the function of high heels in daily life, in the production of class and gender, and in the staging of erotic fantasy."

Part of the beauty of Mrs Bata's vision for collecting and for the museum was her world wide view - and her lack of elitism - she collected from everywhere and from every socio-economic level. She didn't give multiculturalism (including Indigenous cultures around the world) lip service... she gave it breath and life in her collecting and in the museum. Here are some other titles of shows the museum has put on.

Sonja Bata Toronto Star photo 1969

The Toronto Reference Library has a particularly strong collection in Ontario historical books and ephemera and these are a few items relating to the Batawa:

Bata Bugle Magazine May 1943

Welcome to Batawa 1955

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