Elisabeth Thorsen is a Norwegian shoemaker and artist. She graduated from the Norwegian shoemaker school in 2008 and has been making art out of shoes ever since. She approaches her projects with a unique angle as she is making pieces of art, not merely functional footwear. Her shoes have an aesthetic expression, pleasing to the eye as well as challenging to fully grasp. She likes to craft her shoes experimenting with unusual material not commonly used for shoemaking. Recycled material such as furniture, pencils, carpets, drapes and other unusually material such as ice, sugar and sports tape has all been included in her work.
Her inspiration is from fairytales, nature, art and 70s movies. Elisabeth gets very inspired by and has a long experience collaborating with other artists. She also does performances both live and in video productions. Her previous work has been shown at museums in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Norway.
In 2017, Elisabeth Thorsen launched her own exclusive and limited collection of goodyear welted shoes. Many of the shoes are made with hand-woven vintage carpets and vegetable tanned leather. The carpet shoes are unique items, no pair is completely the same. Some of the plain leather shoes will be unique pieces where other artists have been invited to decorate them. Elisabeth also wants to invite the buyer to do something special with the shoes themselves.
© Elisabeth Thorsen
