Collector

Pflflugerville woman’s fondness for footwear is not confifined to the closet.

“This is my mini museum.” That’s how Lois Butler greets me at the door of her impeccably curated and spacious home in Pflflugerville. Dolly, her remarkably quiet, well-behaved Jack Russell terrier/Chihuahua mix — “my sweetheart and my best friend,” Butler says — greets me with curious sniffffs and friendly licks. The two have been constant companions since Butler’s husband died after the couple moved into the house nine years ago.

“It was a big loss,” she says. “But then I made it my house.”

She decorated the walls with a mix of prints from famous artists including Chagall and Renoir along with pop- culture works that depict the ostentatious glamour of Hollywood’s golden age. There are framed knickknacks and, of course, photos of her children and grandchildren.

It’s a lot to take in, but as my eyes dart around the room, I begin to see examples of the item that brought me here. Shoes. Butler, who is wearing a navy blue blouse adorned with shoes and has tiny heels dangli ng

from her earlobes, has been collec ti ng miniature versions of footwear — mostly made of ceramic or glass — since the mid1960s. Many of them, adorned with pearls, fur, flowers and fringe, are on display in a shrine in their own room, but there are hints of her passion everywhere: depictions of footwear show up in drawings and paintings; the frames that hold these items; even on the rings of her shower cur- tain and the stopper in her kitchen sink.

Butler doesn’t hesitate for a second when I ask her, “Why shoes?”

“I have been really fat and really thin and back again my whole life, and shoes and purses and earrings will fifit you no matter what,” says Butler, who, incidentally, seems to be in fifine shape today. “You don’t go up a size and down a size. Your earlobes and generally your feet will stay exactly the way they are.”

To that end, she has 74 actual pairs of shoes in her closet. “A lot of them I can’t wear because they’re very high heels,” says Butler who, at her peak height stood 5 feet, 1 inch tall. “But I don’t want to give them up.”

Occasionally people will ask her why she keeps the big house for just her and Dolly. Butler replies that she needs the room for all of her stuffffffffffff.

She’s found shoe-related items at hardware stores, airport shops, dollar stores, garage sales and art auctions. She’s even purchased collectibles from street vendors. “Here, there and everywhere,” she says. “If you’re looking, you’ll fifind things. It just clicks.

“I think (collectors) are interesting, because they see things that other people just walk right past,” Butler says.