Abandoned Shoe Factory.

Melbourne's inner northern suburbs of Collingwood, Fitzroy, Richmond, Clifton Hill and Northcote formed a concentration of boot and shoe manufacturing from the mid-19th century through to the 1970s. By 1933, the year of Northcote's Jubilee celebrations, the borough described itself as an important manufacturing city with a population of 36,129; the Arthurton Road factory was operational by then. Factories in Northcote from this period typically featured sawtooth roofs and decorative brickwork, blending functional design with regional interwar industrial style.

Lost Collective photographed the abandoned interior in 2011 and 2012, with the production floor still carrying its clicker press, sewing desks, vacuum sealer and dispatch equipment. Print titles for the series identify the surviving operational areas (sewing desk, dispatch, vacuum sealer front, vacuum sealer hoses, rear workshop, upstairs workshop, clicker press) along with the smoko area and its radio still in place. A clicker press is a die-cutting machine used to stamp leather or synthetic material into shoe component shapes; its presence confirms leather-cutting on site.

Employment in Melbourne's footwear industry peaked in the 1960s at nearly 12,000 workers, most of them women. From the 1980s, tariff reductions under the Hawke government's economic liberalisation programme exposed Australian manufacturers to low-cost imported footwear, and small mid-sized factories closed across the inner north. The Purnell Shoe Company has no Australian Business Number on record, consistent with a company that ceased before the ABN system was introduced on 1 July 2000; the factory was demolished and the consolidated parcel at 9-13 Arthurton Road redeveloped as a unit complex from 2016.