Tribal and ethnic footwear of the world

Boy Habraken was born literally between shoes and leather at the end of World War 2 in Eindhoven - The Netherlands. At the age of twenty he separated from his father's shoe-business and started his own import/wholesale company in footwear. He stood at the base of some of the biggest footwear concerns in Europe and today he is still involved as an advisory board-member in them. The expansion of his companies in the past 40 years brought him on numerous travels to all corners of the globe. He visited over a 120 countries and lived in Taiwan. In his spare time he collected footwear which was part of traditional indigenous clothing. As important as the shoes themselves, was the related information, such as; used materials, the way of making, the use, the age and name in the native language. It all resulted in a unique collection of over 2500 pairs of shoes out of more than 155 countries, states and territories. There are exceptional specimens of North-American Indians, Arctic Inuit, African Tribes, Berber, Bedouin, Mongols, the Ottoman - and the pre-Inca empires.