Slippers

Unknown

1850–75 · leather · Costume Institute

While many house and bedroom slippers of the mid-19th century are at least in part homemade, there were common manufactured types as well. This pair of boy's bedroom slippers is a miniature version of one of the standard men's types. It features an attractive cutout border at the throat in contrasting color and texture of leather, which is nicely set off with white topstitching. The cut of these slippers, with the front and back in separate pieces curving down to the sole at the center, is called "d'Orsay" after Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count d'Orsay (1801–1852), a French amateur artist and dandy, who popularized the style.

Artist

Unknown

Date

1850–75

Medium

leather

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Arthur Turnbull Hill, 1932