How to Have Long-Lasting Shoes, 1660

Hans Sachs, Beschreibung aller Stände (1568)

To be at small charges for Shooes, you may have the best, and almost everlasting, made of the back part of an Ass, where he useth to carry burdens upon: these Shooes will never wear out, for if a Man always walk amongst Stones or Thornes they decay not. But with too much age they will grow so hard that it is impossible to pull them on.

Johann Jacob Wecker, Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature

These ass-leather shoes aren’t just footwear, they’re a life partner.