The four-storey museum houses more than 12, 500 shoes from different cultures spanning 4, 500 years of history, including pairs of 16th-century Venetian platform shoes known as chopines (which range between 15 and 50cm in height, sometimes too tall for a woman to walk unaccompanied), bear fur boots worn by the Japanese samurai and golden stilettos by modern designer Manolo Blahnik.

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He borrowed a 16 mm camera, cut up his mother's old fur coat to make a bear model, and made a film about himself and his dog being menaced by a bear.

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