Sandals (mitalawanda / mitawanda) or Clogs (kiatu cha mti) (c. 1800s): Art, History and Details

Sandals (mitalawanda / mitawanda) or Clogs (kiatu cha mti) (c. 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Common in the Indian Ocean region, wooden sandals changed meaning across place and time. This pair’s base elevates the foot as the toes grip an antelope-shaped peg (msuruaki). Crisp geometric sole designs suggest they were rarely worn. East African elites and merchants once had exclusive rights to wooden shoes, wearing elaborate ones only for portraits. Formerly enslaved people living along the coast wore simpler ones from the 1840s onward, adopting elite footwear to assert their liberation. However, slave traders like the Zanzibari “Tippu Tip” (c. 1832–1905) likely brought mitalawanda to Central Africa; stylistic elements of this pair hail from that region.

Object facts

• Title: Sandals (mitalawanda / mitawanda) or Clogs (kiatu cha mti)
• Date: c. 1800s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, unidentified carver
• Type: Garment
• Technique: Wood and glass beads
• Dimensions: Overall: 6 x 10.2 cm (2 3/8 x 4 in.); Part 2: 4.5 x 12.4 cm (1 3/4 x 4 7/8 in.); Part 3: 6 x 9.5 cm (2 3/8 x 3 3/4 in.); Part 4: 3.2 x 12.1 cm (1 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1929.566

A detail from the museum

This distinctive footwear traveled from Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Africa, first to the Swahili Coast and then further inland to parts of Central Africa. The deity Krishna wears similar shoes (paduka) in an eighteenth-century Indian miniature painting (2003.344).

Collection credit

Educational Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Permanent Collection Installations: Arts of Africa: Gallery Rotation.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 62, no.4 (December 2022): 12-13.

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.