Bronze Baby Shoes

Bronze baby shoes

Bronze baby shoes seem to be making a comeback.  They were a popular item in the 1930s thru 1960s and then fell out of popularity.  Not only using the shoes for bookends and photo frames, people today are having the bronzing business drill a little hole in the back of the shoes to lace ribbon through and using them for Christmas ornaments for the Christmas tree. 

Bronzing has been around since the 6^th century but the business of bronzing baby shoes seem to have started with Violet Shinbach of Cleveland Ohio in about 1934.  She found a way to bronze baby shoes and went door to door selling them. 

To bronze baby shoes, the shoes aren’t doused in bronze. Instead, they’re sealed in a liquid material and coated with a copper-infused liquid that makes the shoes conductive. The next step? Baby’s shoes are suspended into electroplating tanks with special chemicals that make copper cling. The end result are shoes that are completely encased in metal, forever.

And it is not just baby shoes, it could be adults shoes, your grandfathers WW2 combat boots, baby pacifiers, baseball and soccer shoes, anything that will hold up in the bronzing process can be made into a reminiscences of someone forever.

The cost will be slightly under a hundred dollars when the shoes plus a base is ordered.  As you expand into on the display of the shoes (picture frames cigar tray etc) the cost will go up.  There are several companies that still do bronzing.