The shelves, walls and floors are filled with decades-old equipment used in practicing a trade — handcrafting shoes and boots — whose heyday has come and gone. [...] the new creations that leave the workshop find their way to customers around the world thanks to that modern invention, the internet. [...] employees Yashi Gorji and Mike O'Connell, both students at the University of Wyoming, were working through the crimping process, when wet leather is stretched over a boot-shaped board and smoothed into place to form the front of a cowboy boot. Gorji has worked for Mattimore for the last year and said she loves taking a boot from a drawing on a piece of paper to an actual piece of footwear. On shelves behind Gorji and O'Connel in the crowded workshop were dozens of lasts, or foot-shaped molds that a leather shoe or boot is built around. Most of the floor space in Mattimore's shop is taken with large pieces of ancient-looking and industrial-sized machinery piled with shavings or strung with thread, leaving a narrow walkway circling the collection. The various tools of the boot-making trade take on the specialized cutting, pressing, punching, trimming and sewing chores. Jennifer James was a student at Rutgers University studying theatrical production when she spent six weeks in Laramie learning to make shoes with Mattimore.