Vamp with Embroidered Floral Motifs

As the only existent one of a pair, this shoe vamp, made of lake blue silk fabric with inconspicuous floral motifs, is decorated with a rockery flanked by two flowering branches, which were embroidered via loop stitches, namely, knitting rows of loops with silk threads first and then linking these rows together to form a decorative face. In its early days, this technique was usually applied by fixing one row of loops onto the foundation fabric, and then expanding the loop rows unattached to the fabric and finishing with sewing the other edges to the foundation. The later Yuan dynasty (1271-1368 AD) saw the emergence of a variant of loop stitches, featuring different batches of loops fixed onto the foundation fabric at varied time intervals, with the later stitches encircling the earlier ones.