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Pair of Shoes

19th century (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Pair of women's purple silk shoes. The shoes are made for bound feet. They shoes are embroidered with a stalk, flower and butterfly motif. They have green-blue commercial ribbons attached to the cuffs and silk vamp appliques. The ornately decorated curved wooden soles are covered with cotton with an embroidered white star on each heel.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Parts
This object consists of 2 parts.

  • Shoe
  • Shoe
Materials and techniques
Embroidered silk with cotton and wood
Brief description
Pair of women's silk shoes for bound feet, China, 19th century
Physical description
Pair of women's purple silk shoes. The shoes are made for bound feet. They shoes are embroidered with a stalk, flower and butterfly motif. They have green-blue commercial ribbons attached to the cuffs and silk vamp appliques. The ornately decorated curved wooden soles are covered with cotton with an embroidered white star on each heel.
Dimensions
  • Length: 14cm
  • Height: 10cm
  • Width: 6cm
Marks and inscriptions
  • Transliteration
Object history
According to Dorothy Ko, the Chinese used a variety of names to refer to shoes for bound feet - including arched shoes (gongxie), embroidered slippers (xiuxie), and gilded lilies (jinliain, which also refers to the bound feet in particular and to the customs associated with footbinding in general). In her book, she has adopted a modern English term, lotus shoes. Largely handmade at home (unless it requires metal, leather or wooden parts) the decorated motifs of these shoes often symbolised fertility, longevity, happiness, wealth and success. Shoes differed in types (indoor, outdoor, sleeping, or funerary), styles (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Shanxi, Shandong, Fujian, Guangdong, and Taiwan), materials (cotton, silk, felt, bamboo, wood, etc.), artisanship and structure that could affect the body and gait of the wearer. Apart from embodying the material and bodily experiences of the makers and wearers, they are important representations of feminine beauty, sensuality, cultural identity, social status and character of the female user. They were largely worn by women of the upper class elite up till the 17th-18th century until they became truly widespread from the 19th century onwards.

This pair's ornate curved wooden sole covered with fabric, toe area arched downward, and wide shaft are features that distinguished Shandong booties, while its fabric-covered sole indicates that the pair is intended to be worn indoors.

The shoes are unworn.

On display in the V&A exhibition, Shoes: Pleasure and Pain between 13 June 2015 – 31 January 2016.
Subjects depicted
Bibliographic reference
Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: The Bata Shoe Museum/University of California Press, 2001
Collection
Accession number
FE.97:1, 2-2002

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Record createdJanuary 14, 2004
Record URL
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