Clogs
Shoes with wooden soles, or carved entirely from wood, whose clatter is used in percussive dancing.
Also: wooden shoes, klompen
Clogs were everyday working footwear across much of Europe. The English clog has a leather upper nailed to a thick wooden sole. Mill workers in Lancashire and the north-east tapped out rhythms in them, said to copy the beat of the looms, and clog dancing became a competitive stage act in the nineteenth century. The Dutch klomp is carved whole from a block of wood and is worn in folk dances of the Netherlands. Wooden soles were forerunners of the metal taps on tap shoes.