Meet Mik Wright, from Swaziland to West Virginia. Mik was born in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) in 1949. He spent a blessed and loving childhood in Zambia, and a teen age of discovery in Botswana where he was fortunate to travel frequently into the Kalahari Desert and Okavango Swamps. It was during this period that he first met Peace Corps volunteers who turned him on to jazz and blues and rapped about life in the great American dream.
In 1968 Mik was working as a field officer for “Anglo American” when he had a motorcycle accident, which resulted in the shortening of his right leg and permanent damage to his knee. Three years later he met a lady who was making an idyllic living from leatherwork and organic gardening. He fell in love, got married, and learned about leather. They expanded the business to South Africa. Mik started making shoes and boots suitable for rock climbing and bush wear and created a special pair for himself, designed to meet the demands of his injury. Things changed, as things will, and they separated nine years later.
After working for 18 months teaching his craft at Jabulani (happiness), a rehabilitation center for paraplegic Zulu people in Zululand, Mik went into business with his brother Pat and his sister in law Beth. They moved back to Swaziland and were soon exporting their shoes and clothes to England, they established markets at Covent Garden, Camden Lock, and Portobello Rd., and moved to Somerset from London. Mik moved to the United States where he displayed and sold his work at the juried craft shows around the country.
Mik now lives in Lewis county West Virginia, where he creates unique and wonderful footwear, including a range of custom shoes with exotic leathers. His daughter lei who does all the painting and custom artwrok is now making a wonderful line of leather skirts, inspired by the new line of dance shoes that they have been making recently.
Those Shoes have been in such prestigious shows as the Philadelphia Museum show, Smithsonian Craft show and the New Orleans Jazz festival, and have been the #1 seller at Tamarack for the last seven years.
There are now many imitators of Mik’s shoes, in England and the United States, and even his display booth has been copied. None however, compare to the original, ever contemporary, distinguished work created at his home in the Appalachian Mountains.