{"id":191401,"date":"1966-08-29T22:58:00","date_gmt":"1966-08-29T20:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/?p=191401"},"modified":"2026-09-26T20:21:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T18:21:24","slug":"h-hoefman-decorated-four-million-clogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/h-hoefman-decorated-four-million-clogs\/","title":{"rendered":"H. Hoefman Decorated Four Million Clogs in Half a Century"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dagblad Tubantia, 29 August 1966<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u2014 increasingly by machine, of course, but still sometimes by hand. One such craftsman was H. Hoefman<\/a> of Gasthuisstraat in Bredevoort. More precisely, he was a ritser<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The term may mean as little to most readers now as it did to the newspaper\u2019s reporter that morning. Ritsen<\/em> 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<\/a> in Barlo, Aalten.<\/p>\n

At the anniversary reception given by the company, Mr Lichterink quickly calculated that Hoefman \u2014 whom he warmly described as \u201ca true friend and colleague\u201d \u2014 had decorated roughly two million pairs of clogs over fifty years: about four million individual clogs, an almost unimaginable pile.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

\"Clog
\u2026 one of the four million \u2026<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In 1957, Hoefman had already been awarded a bronze Medal of Honour in the Order of Orange-Nassau<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1966, H. Hoefman of Bredevoort marked fifty years at Lichterink clog factory after decorating around four million clogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-191401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194348,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191401\/revisions\/194348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}