This exhibition features a vast variety of lotus shoes from the Qing dynasty, showcasing regional diversity and stylistic variation across China. In addition to footwear, the exhibition includes an extensive array of related materials—photographs, illustrations, sculptural works, shoe samples, paintings, and jewelry—that illuminate the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of footbinding.

For over a thousand years, successive generations of Chinese women endured the body modification practice of footbinding. Beginning in early childhood, young girls underwent a painful process in which their feet were tightly bound with cotton bandages by their mothers, systematically compressing and halting their natural growth. The result was an altered foot shape—tiny, arched, and pointed—believed to resemble the closed blossom of a lotus flower. These so-called "lotus feet" became a revered aesthetic ideal and a symbol of femininity, delicacy, and desirability.

Among the most coveted outcomes of this practice was the "golden lotus": an adult woman’s foot bound to a mere three inches or less in length. Regarded as the pinnacle of beauty, the golden lotus was celebrated not only as an adornment, but also as a marker of social status and refinement.

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This exhibition is presented with artifacts from Chicago-based collector Paul Prentice and curated by Jeffrey Moy.