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This coloured silk embroidery decorates the sides and toes of a pair of women's half-boots of the 1880s. The stylised floral embroidery in stem and satin stitch is bold and pronounced against the black satin ground; and the boots button to the side, a style of fastening which had first become fashionable in the 1850s. Short boots like this were extremely popular by the 1880s and 1890s: the 1894 edition of the London Shoe Catalogue listed no less than 33 different types of women's boots (and nearly 60 styles of shoe.)

Although this is a highly fashionable pair of boots, mainly for indoor wear, working women often chose to wear robust leather half boots also, as a warmer, more practical alternative to shoes. However, leather or fabric boots generally cost rather more than shoes and were thus an extravagance for poor consumers. In "Lark Rise to Candleford", Flora Thompson wrote of her youth in a rural village in the 1880s, and remembered that boots were always a major purchase, requiring careful manipulation of household budgets, "often bought with the extra money the men earned in the harvest field".

Full item descriptions:

"boots" [1947.1015]

Related Themes:

Women's Boots
Embroidery