A Java nuptial couple in wedding dress

Java, ca 1870. Photograph.

In a photograph of a wedding couple from Java, the bride is clearly wearing “rhinoceros horn” slippers. The couple is not Javanese and their ethnicity or culture is difficult to determine from their dress; the photograph was part of an album of images from Batavia. The photograph was probably staged and taken in a studio, perhaps even inspired by contemporaneous drawings and descriptions of ethnic life. Thus it would appear that “rhinoceros horn” slippers also circulated in Batavia and its environs, and perhaps more widely in Java.