Object details
Accession number
SP1954.1.a-b
Primary Creator
Maison Chapelle Cordonnier
(established Paris, 1815)
Full title
Pair of Purple Satin Slippers
Creation Date
about 1900
Provenance
Possibly purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from Chapelle, a Parisian maker of fine women's shoes, for 42 or 84 francs on 21 September 1900. (with a second unidentified pair of shoes)
Gift from Isabella Stewart Gardner to her goddaughter, Mrs. Henri Raffy (Katharine Foote, about 1882-1970).
Gift from Mrs. Henri Raffy to Ethel D. Evans (b. 1885), a teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, Massachusetts.
Gift from Ethel D. Evens to Claudia A. Potter, drama teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind, 1950.
Presented by Claudia A. Potter to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston on 27 October 1954.
Marks
Inscribed (on a large paper label on insole, inside right shoe): 85 Rue de Richelieu / Chapelle / Cordonnier / pour / Dames / Paris [Chappelle was a Parisian maker of fine women's shoes]
Inscribed (on a small paper label on insole, inside right shoe): Droit
Inscribed (on a small paper label on insole, inside left shoe): Gauche
Inscribed (on inside heel, inside left shoe, in ink): Mme Gardner / 179 [?]
Inscribed (on a label on the shoebox): Chapelle, Cordonnier pour Dames 85 Rue de Richeliu, Paris (printed) / Madam Gardner 1 P Souliers Satin Vert from Claudia Potter 12 Richgrain Ave[?] Antsham[?] (pencil)
Dimensions
Overall: 10 x 2 1/2 x 4 in. (25.4 x 6.4 x 10.2 cm)
Display Media
Satin, silk, grosgrain silk, and leather; lined with white kid and linen
Web Commentary
Made in Paris in the late nineteenth century, this pair of fashionable satin slippers with graduated straps dotted by bows, were a gift from Isabella Stewart Gardner to her goddaughter, Katharine Foote, daughter of famous Boston composer, Arthur Foote. Foote donated them to the Perkins School for the Blind for use in the drama department’s costume collection, where they could be worn by children in school plays. Imbued with happy memories of school performances, by 1954 the shoes were no longer used, and they were donated to the museum as a relic of Isabella’s taste in fashion.
Permanent Gallery Location
Archives
Bibliography
Hilliard Goldfarb and Susan Sinclair. Isabella Stewart Gardner: Woman and the Myth. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1994), p. 35, no. 13. (as French, late 19th century-early 20th century)
Rights and reproductions
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