Gilt-bronze Boot, One of a Pair (907–1125): Art, History and Details

Gilt-bronze Boot, One of a Pair (907–1125) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Bronze and silver-gilt boots, modeled after textile and leather boots, were found in Liao tombs. A pair of silver-gilt boots (dated 1018 or earlier) with phoenix motifs and cloud scrolls, were excavated from the tomb of Princess Chen and Xiao Shaoju in Inner Mongolia at Qinglongshan town in Naiman Banner; the couple’s faces were covered with gold masks. This gilt-bronze boot shows rising dragons chasing pearls and may have been made for a male tomb occupant.

Object facts

• Title: Gilt-bronze Boot, One of a Pair
• Date: 907–1125
• Culture: Northern China, Liao dynasty (907-1125)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: Gilt-bronze
• Dimensions: 43.2 x 29.2 cm (17 x 11 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Liao Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2023.97

A detail from the museum

The boot's dragon motif suggests that the wearer was a male princely member of the ruling family.

Collection credit

Gift of Barbara S. Robinson and Family

Further reading listed by the museum

• Watt, James C. Y., Anne E. Wardwell, and Morris Rossabi. When silk was gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1997.
• von Spee, Clarissa. “From the Silk Road to the Imperial Court - Chinese Textiles at the Cleveland Museum of Art,” in Arts of Asia, May-June 2018, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 50–57.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.