H. Hoefman Decorated Four Million Clogs in Half a Century

Dagblad Tubantia, 29 August 1966

Clogs may no longer be worn as widely as they once were, but they were still being made. The declining craft continued to be practised with considerable dedication and skill in parts of Twente and eastern Gelderland — increasingly by machine, of course, but still sometimes by hand. One such craftsman was H. Hoefman of Gasthuisstraat in Bredevoort. More precisely, he was a ritser.

The term may mean as little to most readers now as it did to the newspaper’s reporter that morning. Ritsen meant cutting decorative patterns into clogs, work that was still often done by hand. Hoefman may well have been a record-holder in the craft. On Saturday he celebrated fifty years with the same employer, the Lichterink clog factory in Barlo, Aalten.

At the anniversary reception given by the company, Mr Lichterink quickly calculated that Hoefman — whom he warmly described as “a true friend and colleague” — had decorated roughly two million pairs of clogs over fifty years: about four million individual clogs, an almost unimaginable pile.

Many guests at the reception, including Mayor E.S. van Veen, wanted to see exactly how the work was done, so Hoefman gave a demonstration on the spot.

A clog was found somewhere and he set to work. A few minutes later it was decorated. It passed from hand to hand and the fine carving produced by the proud jubilarian was rightly admired. It may well have been the finest moment of his day.