The history of Pendragon – year by year 1987

We, Adrian and Jackie first met, at the Griffith University in Brisbane – Nathan Campus. Adrian was pretending to study environmental studies and I (Jackie) was studying modern Asian studies (majoring in Indonesian language). Clearly, it was destined that Environmental sciences and Asian Studies would lead to a long, decade-spanning career in shoemaking.
While academically disparate, what we shared was creativity. We were making similar things in our spare time….hand painted T-shirts, fimo jewellry and candles….hippy shit basically! Our first stall was an Orientation week Market at Griffith Uni.
On April 11 1987, we opened a stall at a craft collective space in Newstead/Teneriffe called Pierrot’s Arts and Crafts Centre. It wasn’t anything luxurious or cutting edge, it was a warehouse with the floor divided into stall spaces. Our first shop! We loved it and met lots of other cool people making and selling their own wares. We eventually shared that space with our beloved friend Kez, a silk painter (among other things), who told us about the medieval fairs.
I got a domestic sewing machine for my 21st birthday and the first thing I made on it was a pair of half black, half purple suede pointy boots to wear to our first medieval fair stall. Adrian hand-stitched his from “elf green” suede. This was just meant to be part of our costumes, but we got hooked. We made extras and put them on the stall – and the rest is history. We took orders that day for different versions of what we were wearing. We just said yes to all the medieval re-enactment people’s requests….threw ourselves in at the deep end. It’s a great way to learn. It was so exciting unravelling the mystery of shoemaking. There were no other shoemakers around in Brisbane that we knew of…..no books and definitely no internet. Necessity is the mother of invention! It was around this time we named our business Pendragon Boot Company. We had just read the Mists of Avalon and it seemed to be an appropriate name bridging both the real and magical worlds.
Later that year, we migrated to a stall space in Paddy’s market Teneriffe (Brisbane), aptly naming it “The Dragon’s Lair”. We shared it with Kez and her daughter Tracey. We sold lots of suede leather accessories and boots. The best of times…. We didn’t know then, that we would  still be “Pendragon” over 30 years later. These early boots were very primitive (we had no idea what we were doing!)