Visitors to restored Williamsburg can identify another operating craft shop by the overhead sign of the “Boot & Shoemaker.” The little building not far from the foot of Palace Green represents the shop of George Wilson & Co. “next Door to Mr. Greenhow’s Store,” and stands on foundations of an eighteenth-century structure. In the absence of documentary or archaeological evidence as to the appearance of George Wilson’s shop or its contents, the architecture and furnishings of the shop follow traditional precedents. [Illustration: _Cordonier_ _An illustration, again from Diderot’s encyclopedia, showing some European styles and techniques of shoemaking. Colonial American styles and methods were similar. Unfortunately no one on this side of the ocean wrote or illustrated any descriptive books on the subject, so we must rely heavily on the French source._] A working shop that demonstrates shoemaking and the general skills of leatherworking, the shop’s size and contents are typical and authentic. One sees in it numerous boots and shoes in various stages of construction, a full set of lasts, other articles of leather, including belts, mugs, and black jacks, and an assortment of knives, awls, and other leatherworking tools of the eighteenth century. In contrast to this small shop in Williamsburg, the “Shoe Factory” operated by John Wilson, George’s predecessor in Norfolk, included these items presumably found there by the appraisers of his estate: 304 pairs of “Negroe Shoes” valued at 5 shillings per pair 103 pairs of men’s shoes, some at 6/ and some at 9/ per pair 6 pairs of boots at 20/ per pair, and four pairs of boot legs 15 pairs of women’s shoes at 5/ and 6/; one of silk at 10/ 79 pairs of children’s shoes at 3/ and 3/9 235 lasts; 60 or more hides and skins; 6½ dozen heels; 3 dozen blacking balls; 17 shoemaker’s seats; “4 Gross Tax”; and “a sise stick.” The “tax” in this case is easy to evade by changing it to tacks. The “sise stick” was almost certainly the same sort of device that is used in shoe stores today to measure the size of the customer’s foot. But what really strikes one about this inventory is the magnitude of the operation it reveals. With an indicated seventeen workers, it was doubtless one of the few mass-production factories colonial Virginia could boast. The ratio of boots to shoes for men—6 to 103 pairs—seems out of line for Virginia where, as one observer wrote, “even the most indigent person has his saddle-horse, which he rides to every place, and on every occasion.” Virginians being “excessively fond of horses,” one would expect them to have worn boots most of the time, and this expectation would seem to be corroborated by Robert Gilbert’s repeated advertisements for the services of a journeyman bootmaker. The evidence indicates that in the latter part of the century boots appear to have sold better than shoes.