lucky charms; shoes (clothing: footwear)

Lucky charm in the form of a pink, carved stone shoe with upturned, round toes. Decorated with incised floral motifs on sides and a character on base.

'Xie' means shoe in Chinese, and is pronounced similarly to the word for evil spirit. Carved miniature stone shoes were given to young children to ward off evil spirits.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

If you have any further information about objects in our collections or can suggest corrections to our information, please contact us: enquiry@horniman.ac.uk