What makes you think it's medieval? Guilds, Corporations and similar monopolies of craftsmen, with the apprentice-journeyman-master system and variants, persisted in most of Europe until the 19th century. France abolished them first in the Loi Le Chapelier of 1791 and the influence of Adam Smth and tides of economic liberalism would lead to widespread deregulation. But even where deregulated the organizations did not vanish because they lost monopoly status. Here in Sweden we abolished it in 1846, and the former corporations (which sprung from medieval guilds) re-formed into trade associations that issue master's certificates and so forth, maintaining the old standards on a voluntary basis. E.g you don't have to be a member of the Swedish master-shoe-maker's association to make or repair shoes. But it doesn't hurt business to have a certificate. In Germany on the other hand, the Handwerksordnung (Trade and Crafts Code) still does require people in certain professions to be masters of their craft in order to be self-employed. (including shoemaking)

I don't know what the Meisterprüfung for shoemakers in 1790s Bohemia would've involved, but at the very least you'd typically have to apprentice for a certain number of years and indeed produce a_Meisterstück_ ('master piece' - which today's German distinguishes from Meisterwerk meaning 'masterpiece' in the more general, non-guild sense).

However, there could be other ways to get promoted. In Sweden at that time the system had already been liberalized somewhat. Among other things, if you lived in a town that did not have a master of a certain craft, you could gain mastership just by having your mästerstycke approved by a single local magistrate.