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China, 617-1125. Finely worked in silver alloy repoussé, the toe section pointing upwards with scroll designs to the sides, centered by five ribs neatly incised with scroll and geometric motifs above a flowerhead on a ruyi-form stand. The sides finely engraved with birds amid scrolling leafy vines issuing floral blossoms on a minutely ring-punched ground. (2)
Provenance: From the private collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, New York. With one old label from the Hartman’s inscribed with Alan Hartman’s dating for the present lot, ‘Liao’, along with further abbreviated notes. Alan Hartman (1930-2023) was an influential American art dealer, who took over his parents’ antique business in Manhattan and established the legendary Rare Art Gallery on Madison Avenue, with further locations in Dallas and Palm Beach. His wife Simone (née Horowitz) already served as assistant manager of the New York gallery before the couple married in 1975, and together they built a renowned collection for over half a century and became noted art patrons, enriching the collections of important museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (which opened the Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries in 2013) as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum in New York. Alan Hartman has been described as the greatest antiques dealer of our generation, and was widely recognized as a world authority in Chinese jade, bronzes, and Asian works of art.
Condition: Good condition with expected old wear and tarnish, general traces of usage, small dents, minute nicks, little warping. The interior with minor areas of corrosion and scattered verdigris. Naturally grown patina overall, depicting the typical copper-red hue of ancient Tang silver.
Weight: 274.4 g
Dimensions: Length 16.5 cm (each)
Liao dynasty shoes are extremely rare, as the traditional footwear has always been boots, which were made of leather in real life, and made of gold and silver for the burial of the imperial family. As mentioned by Hiromi Kinoshita in Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China's Liao Empire (907-1125), New York, 2006, page 104: “Boots were practical and necessary footwear for the seminomadic Khitan. They provided warmth and protected their wearers not only from the elements but also from chafing when riding. ... The high value the Khitan accorded to boots is recorded in Chinese texts when, in the eleventh century, the Song and Liao emperors exchanged leather boots and other luxurious goods as birthday gifts.”
The present examples, made from thinly hammered silver alloy sheets, were made for a female royal burial. As shoes are a crucial part of an ensemble, they may suggest the owners' penchant toward domestic living rather than the mobile, active lifestyle on the Steppes. Khitan tomb decorations also reflected the Chinese influence on architecture – the burial chamber of the Princess of Chen (d. 1018) is in the shape of a yurt, while the decoration on top of the tomb gate reflects the architectural style of the Jin, who took inspiration from the Han Chinese.
Note the size of 16.5 cm of each shoe, which is roughly one third smaller than that of an average European woman (c. 23-24 cm). This is due to the so-called foot-binding procedure, which surfaced in China during the later Tang period. The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated during the reign of the 10th century Emperor Li Yu of the Southern Tang, just before the Liao dynasty. Li Yu created a 1.8-meter-tall golden lotus decorated with precious stones and pearls and asked his concubine Yao Niang to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon and perform a dance on the points of her feet on the lotus. Yao Niang's dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her. The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread from there.
One of the earliest archeological evidence for foot binding dates to the tomb of Madame Zhou, who died in 1274. Her skeleton, particularly well preserved, showed that her feet were bound with gauze strips and fit into the narrow, pointed slippers that were buried with her.
Fun Fact!
The House of Fabergé produced a number of miniature hardstone shoes, at least one of which bears a striking resemblance to the present lot, exhibiting a similar curled toe, see a gem-set gold-mounted carved agate slipper at Sotheby’s New York, 14 October 2015. Of course, at a length of 7.5 centimeters this slipper is too small to be worn, and in fact the Fabergé miniature shoes were instead used as small containers for dried flowers or pot-pourri on desks or small tables. However, it evidences that upturned toes are not unique to China – consider in this regard also the poulaine and pigache that were fashionable in medieval Europe or the mojari which originated in the Mughal Empire – and like the current lot shows the essential and universal importance of shoes in the history of human development, a seemingly inconspicuous object that represents mankind’s struggle against nature as well as the fragile balance between cooperation and competition in society.
Expert’s note:
A detailed commentary on the present lot, elaborating on the history of foot-binding and archeological evidence thereof, is available upon request. To receive a PDF copy of this dossier, please refer to the department.
Literature comparison:
A silk embroidered shoe with an up-pointed tip in the Mengdiexuan Collection is illustrated by Jenny F. So in Noble Riders from Pines and Deserts: The Artistic Legacy of the Qidan, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004, pp. 94-95, no. II:4, also on pp. 54-55, figs. 10-11, noted by the author that “Liao shoes from archaeological excavations are very rare” and the only example was found at the Lindong site at Balin Left Banner, Inner Mongolia." See also a brocade woman's shoe with a deep upturned tip, discovered from the Southern Song tomb of Pan Ciming and his wife at Mishan, Lanxi, Zhejiang province, illustrated by Zhou and Gao, Zhongguo lidai funü zhuangshi [Women's Adornment and Dress throughout Chinese History], Taipei, 1988, p. 288, no. 408. Compare a related pair of silver shoes (14 cm long) excavated from the tomb of the Song-dynasty scholar Shi Shengzu, in Quzhou, Zheijiang Province, the soles etched with the name of his first wife, Luo Shuangshuang, now in the Quzhou City Museum. Compare a pair of Tang dynasty brocade shoes unearthed from No. 381 Astana Tomb of Turpan, Xinjiang Province, illustrated by Yunhe Yao, The Changes of Toe-Up-Warped Shoes in Different Dynasties from the Perspective of Archaeology, 2019, fig. 2.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Related
Auction: Bonhams New York, 18 September 2023, lot 94
Price: USD 35,840 or approx. EUR 33,500 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A rare and unusual pair of men's gold shoes, Liao Dynasty
Expert remark: Compare the related form and chased decoration. Note the different material and larger size (30 cm).
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