What links Pietrusza Wola in Podkarpacie with Salvatore Ferragamo?

Pietrusza Wola is a village in Podkarpacie, where Prof. Łukasz Łuczaj, an eminent Polish ethnobotanist, lives and works. A shrub known as kłokoczka grows around his house. It is a very rare plant in Poland, and 90 per cent of its national population is found in the Podkarpacie Province. Kłokoczka, or Staphylea pinnata, has very hard seeds and exceptionally durable wood.

Staphylea pinnata was considered a magical plant. The Carpathian Rusyns of eastern Slovakia used its wood to make butter churns. In Poland, rosaries were made from its seeds. In Slovakia, people believed in its healing power, which was ingested in the form of cigarettes filled with dried fruit husks. According to an old Czech superstition, a person carrying a sprig of spindle tree, blessed nine times, could recognise a witch coming to church. She could be recognised by… her shoes. For instead of one foot, the witch had a hoof.

The hard wood of the cornelian cherry proved excellent for making heels. Scientists discovered the first traces of heels in Persia in the 10th century. Men wore them to appear taller and to ensure their feet stayed firmly in the stirrups whilst riding. According to the ancient Egyptians, heeled shoes were also practical in the slaughterhouse.

In the 17th century, heels entered women's fashion, and a battle began between comfort, elegance and safety. For the higher the heel, the more alluring the upright posture, but also the harder it is to walk in and the greater the risk that it will break or be damaged.

Then came Salvatore Ferragamo, the eleventh of fourteen siblings, an Italian immigrant to the USA, who revolutionised footwear design. The shoemaker to the stars of Hollywood's golden age. So devoted to the comfort of women's footwear that at the start of his career, whilst working in a shoe factory in Boston, he enrolled in anatomy classes to better understand the physiology of the foot. It was he who invented the stiletto heel – a heel at least four inches high – a thin, tall heel reinforced with steel. The first was reportedly designed for Marilyn Monroe.

"Elegance and comfort are not mutually exclusive, and anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn't know what they're talking about," Ferragamo asserted.

Especially as we can then also benefit from the apotropaic properties of Staphylea wood — apotropaic meaning: warding off evil, averting misfortune, driving away evil spirits.