Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeous and fascinating
Review: this book has beautiful picures and fascinating descriptions. I have been in China twice and the bound feet of older women are explained now. I go back to China soon and am going to look for some antique "erotic slippers" as part of my textile collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Tens of millions of women did it,. No one talked about it.
Review: This book was the result of questions asked through the years, following my national lectures on antique Chinese clothing and customs. The majority of the questions asked concerned the 1,000 year old Chinese custom of Han Chinese women binding little girl's feet at about the age of six. People had heard vague references to the custom, but knew nothing really about it. And the little one heard about footbinding was usually incorrect information. It wasn't true that only the rich bound. It wasn't true that women with bound feet were completely limited in their activities. They could climb mountains, plough the fields, work 14 hour days in the rice fields on three or four inch feet, and tens of millions of them did. Americans of Chinese descent asked the most questions. Their mothers or grandmothers had tiny bound lotus feet. But they never were allowed to see them. And the subject was never discussed.In addition to the history of the custom of footbinding, I was quite fascinated by the beautiful little embroidered slippers the women made to hide their misshapen feet. All the beauty and fantasy these women might feel, but had no other way of expressing in their difficult lives, could be expressed in the embroidered images they created on their little shoes. My research led to exotic sexual practices most foreign to our western thinking that involved the tiny feet, as well as wonderful myths concerning the beginnings of footbinding, to beautiful works of art portraying the women with three inch golden lotus feet and shoes, and so many other intriguing directions, that I felt it must go beyond my lectures. My research must be incorporated into a book. And so six years of research became SPLENDID SLIPPERS - A THOUSAND YEARS OF AN EROTIC TRADITION
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Text Combined with Exquisite Photography
Review: This book will delight anyone with an interest in textiles, Far-East history or history of women's role in society. Absolutely one of the most beautifully photographed books I've ever seen. Fascinating text makes this book difficult to open without reading cover to cover, though interestingly, this book is not gender specific. Many friends have commented on having to wrestle it away from their husbands. As a 20 year collector of Ching textiles it has become the most cherished book in my library.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, intriguing, beautifully illustrated.
Review: This was my first exposure to this unusual topic. The author completely drew me in and provided a simple yet comprehensive social and historical account of this old Chinese custom. While mostly factual, the interweaving tale of the young girl gave it life. A few typos noted. An excellent buy!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing. The slippers that enslaved women
Review: We visited friends for the weekend and Splendid Slippers was on a table. Every spare moment, I read. Late into the night, I read. Understanding, for the first time, what foot binding meant. The physical pain of the process to be endured, the crippling for life, the women accepting the tradition and enforcing it on their daughters...an absolutely amazing history... fabulously displayed slippers... wrentching photographs of the reality...woman or man, you will not believe it possible, physically or sprirtually.
Rating:
Summary: Homage to the women who survived!
Review: While this book has exquisite color photos of astonishingly beautiful shoes sewn by the women who wore them together with sepia tones from decades past & current snapshots in modern day China, the subject of this book, the millennium old tradition of binding little girls' feet for the express purpose of enticing their husbands' sexual advances, is heartbreaking. Beverley Jackson, however, doesn't allow you to wallow in pity & neither do the last few ladies she interviewed. Even as they have had to totter en pointe for all of their lives, they have climbed stairways to temples, congregated in market places & generally had good lives. Since the Communist Revolution, however, they have been pariahs, symbols of a decadent past & their works of art & memories have been suppressed. Until this big-footed American strode into their lives, showed them her collection of Splendid Slippers & listened to their stories. A marvelous book, one of a kind & going into its second printing. Very well done!
Rating:
Summary: Homage to the women who survived!
Review: While this book has exquisite color photos of astonishingly beautiful shoes sewn by the women who wore them together with sepia tones from decades past & current snapshots in modern day China, the subject of this book, the millennium old tradition of binding little girls' feet for the express purpose of enticing their husbands' sexual advances, is heartbreaking. Beverley Jackson, however, doesn't allow you to wallow in pity & neither do the last few ladies she interviewed. Even as they have had to totter en pointe for all of their lives, they have climbed stairways to temples, congregated in market places & generally had good lives. Since the Communist Revolution, however, they have been pariahs, symbols of a decadent past & their works of art & memories have been suppressed. Until this big-footed American strode into their lives, showed them her collection of Splendid Slippers & listened to their stories. A marvelous book, one of a kind & going into its second printing. Very well done!
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