Embroidered boots from Yarkand in Xinjiang, collected by Robert Shaw, mid-19th century.
© Foto: Ethnologisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Acc. no. I B. 2014 a,b
The Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin holds a pair of embroidered boots from Yarkand, Xinjiang, in the western parts of China. The boots were collected by the British explorer Robert Barkley Shaw in c. 1869. The embroidery is worked with metal thread and cotton thread. Some of the decoration is worked with chain stitch. The boots measure 40 x 24 cm.
See also: SHAW, Robert (1871). Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar (formerly Chinese Tartary), and return journey over the Karakorum Pass, London: John Murray, 1871. Downloadable here.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin online catalogue (retrieved 4 December 2016).
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