The Punjabi jutti is a leather shoe with no left or right, made on a single last, stitched rather than glued, and embroidered on the upper in silk or metal thread. The Malwa towns of Muktsar and Malout, and Patiala, are the main centres, and the Amritsar style is distinct.
The tilla jutti of Patiala uses gold-coloured metal thread on velvet or leather and is the wedding shoe. The everyday village jutti is plain leather and lasts years.
The trade is caste-based. The tanning, the cutting and the stitching were done by communities treated as untouchable, and the embroidery often by women of those households, and the shoes were worn by everyone.
Machine-made imitations and imported uppers have taken most of the market. Actual hand-stitched juttis, on a hand-cut sole, are a small and shrinking share and are sold at prices that do not reflect the work.
Punjab's leather craft is one of the clearest cases where the object is celebrated and the people who make it are not.
The construction is the same everywhere: a leather sole, no left and right distinction, a closed upper, and stitching that goes through rather than being glued.
The decoration is what differs by town. Muktsar and Malout work in embroidery, Patiala in tilla, the gold thread work, and Amritsar in its own forms.
The whole trade runs on household piece work and on traders who hold the market. It is one of the few crafts in Punjab that is still commercially alive and the maker's share of the price is very small.