Antique Chinese Foot Binding Lotus Shoes Footwear History Collection

Description

My grandmother lived in China back in the 1920's and taught school to missionary children.  She brought back many items from her travels and used this set of shoes to explain to her students in the U.S. about the tradition of Chinese foot binding and the different shoes that were worn in China based on class.  This set included an example of a peasant or lower class shoe (yellow in the last three photos) for working women who needed to be able to walk to carry out their daily work. There is also a sole from an actual shoe to show how remnants of fabric were sewn together to create a thicker sole for shoes for men.
The  small yellow shoe with the straps (photos 3 - 6) is an actual shoe from China and includes an example of how the foot was bound (there is a muslin sample foot with a sock plus binding inside the shoe which can be removed to demonstrate how this was done).  I am guessing that my grandmother made the sample foot and sock herself (back in the 1920's) for use in the classroom, but the embroidered shoe itself is antique Chinese.  The antique postcard also shows how this was done.  The postcard on the reverse says that it was manufactured by Cardinell.Vincent Co. in San Francisco, U.S.A. and published by the Burr Photo Co. Opp. Astor House, Shanghai, China.
Finally, the smallest shoe (red with a blue heel) is also antique Chinese and demonstrates the size of the shoe for the royalty.  The smaller the shoe, the more prestigious.  Supposedly this shoe only covered the big toe.  I am not a historian so this might not be completely accurate, but as best as I can recall, this is the story that my grandmother told us.
I am happy to send more photos if you are interested as I am limited to only twelve with this posting.