How a shoe is built

The fourteenth entry is le patronage, and it is the one word on this page an English reader will render without stopping and get wrong in every particular. « Patronage » with us is what a patron hands out: support for a gallery, custom given to a shop, posts found for friends. Here it is a trade. Le patronage is the drawing of the flat paper pieces into which a curved wooden last has to be translated, and it settles whether the finished shoe fits or merely shuts. The trap is baited, because French does keep a sense close to ours: sous le patronage de heads an official programme, and a parish youth club has been un patronage for a century. So the familiar reading is available on the page, and in a workshop it is never the right one. Two consequences worth carrying away. The person who does the work is un patronnier, who is nobody’s patron. And a firm advertising patronage et gradation is offering pattern cutting and sizing, which is a service and not a kindness.