Unsung House's Grant Gustafson is Doing Some of the Coolest Repair, Customization, and Bootmaking in the Game

Unsung House is a wonderfully rare shoe repair shop. After a half decade learning the trade in a more “standard” cobbler setting, brothers Grant and Isaac Gustafson opened Unsung in a literal old house in Nashville, to focus on impeccable higher-end shoe—and especially boot—repair, restoration, and ground-up creation.

Ben and Ticho sat down with Grant to dig into the beautiful details of Unsung’s work, from how they work a re-last job, to the dark arts of pattern grading, to their 9000-year-old sander that’s the size of a 727, and almost certainly louder.

We also go deep on Unsung’s nascent house-made boot line, specifically with Ticho’s wonderful engineer boots that feature an overdye created from walnuts Grant harvested on his own property—only because he hasn’t found enough wasp cocoons to do it that way.

What’s the purpose of a craftsperson in an Amazon world? We spent plenty of time trying to figure that the hell out—and Grant has as good an outlook as we’ve ever heard.



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