Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
July 15, 1797
Primary Source Reference:
Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, 15 July 1797
Additional Source Text:
"Shewing how the Toes are compressed and prevented growing to their natural size; together with the Dress and the Shoe"
Notes:
Chinese women’s shoes and models of their bound feet were ubiquitous in 19th-century museums, and the Peale Museum had a several. Others were received as follows: on 21 July 1813 from Capt. T. Robinson of Chester, Pa.; on 22 June 1815 from Frederic Huber, Mar[iner?]; and on 16 May 1819 from Samuel Ralston. Accessions Book, pp. 68, 76, 98.
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired many cultural items in 1899 from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. Kimball and P. T. Barnum jointly purchased many of the Peale collections when they were sold about 1849. Dale's donation cannot be positively identified with particular extant artifacts, but the model foot in the center may well have been in the Peale Museum.
Anne Newport Royall visited the Museum about 1825 and left this description: "The shoe of a full grown Chinese lady, is about the size of a child's of two years old; They have a plate of iron inside, but are richly embroidered on the outside with gold and silver; they are of different shapes, but are all very large at the instep, owing probably to the foot being pressed close with iron." Anne Newport Royall, Sketches of the History, Life, and Manners, in the United States (New Haven, 1826), p. 216
Richard Dale was a Philadelphia sea captain. He sailed the merchant ship Ganges to Canton after the Revolution.
