The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Pair of dark brown sandals with flat soles elevated by rounded blocks at the heel and toe. The top of the sole is carved with arcing geometric designs, different on each shoe, while the blocks below the sole have slightly curved stripes extending from the sole to floor. Above the sole, the toes would grip around a peg shaped like an antelope head with pink-tinged glass beads for eyes, mouth open like it's smiling.

Sandals (mitalawanda / mitawanda) or Clogs (kiatu cha mti)

c. 1800s

Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, unidentified carver

Wood and glass beads
Overall: 6 x 10.2 cm (2 3/8 x 4 in.); Part 2: 4.5 x 12.4 cm (1 3/4 x 4 7/8 in.); Part 3: 6 x 9.5 cm (2 3/8 x 3 3/4 in.); Part 4: 3.2 x 12.1 cm (1 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.)
Educational Purchase Fund 1929.566
Location: 108A African

Did You Know?

This distinctive footwear traveled from Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Africa, first to the Swahili Coast and then further inland to parts of Central Africa. The deity Krishna wears similar shoes (paduka) in an eighteenth-century Indian miniature painting (2003.344).

Description

Common in the Indian Ocean region, wooden sandals changed meaning across place and time. This pair’s base elevates the foot as the toes grip an antelope-shaped peg (msuruaki). Crisp geometric sole designs suggest they were rarely worn. East African elites and merchants once had exclusive rights to wooden shoes, wearing elaborate ones only for portraits. Formerly enslaved people living along the coast wore simpler ones from the 1840s onward, adopting elite footwear to assert their liberation. However, slave traders like the Zanzibari “Tippu Tip” (c. 1832–1905) likely brought mitalawanda to Central Africa; stylistic elements of this pair hail from that region.
  • by 1929
    The Old Oak Antique Shop, Worcester, England, by purchase
    1929–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    Provenance Footnotes
    1 Original object card, curatorial file.
  • “Permanent Collection Installations: Arts of Africa: Gallery Rotation.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 62, no.4 (December 2022): 12-13. Reproduced: P. 13.
  • Arts of Africa. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (December 10, 2021-July 2, 2023).
  • {{cite web|title=Sandals (mitalawanda / mitawanda) or Clogs (kiatu cha mti)|url=false|author=|year=c. 1800s|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1929.566