This may come as news to many of you, but Andy Warhol once liked to sketch shoes. And now is your chance to own a piece of fashion and pop-art history, but it will cost you a pretty penny.
On Tuesday, Sotheby’s auction house is putting a complete portfolio of Warhol shoe prints under the hammer. Titled “A La Recherche Du Shoe Perdu,” the collection consists of 16 offset lithographs, 15 of which have been hand-colored. A double cover is included, also hand-colored.
Each individual shoe print comes annotated with text written by poet Ralph Pomeroy with the lettering by Julia Warhol, Warhol’s mother. Many of the captions referenced timely pop culture, such as a deep red shoe accompanied by the words “Dial M for shoe,” relating to the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, “Dial M For Murder.”
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Also included in the lot is “Shoe And Leg,” which is believed to have been produced by Warhol at approximately the same time, according to Sotheby’s.
The illustrations were created in 1955, during Warhol’s time working as a commercial artist for shoe company I. Miller. Many of his works from this period were showcased in The New York Times, when I. Miller regularly took out advertisements in the paper’s Sunday edition.
Sotheby’s have listed the estimate at between 100,000 and 150,000 GBP, which currently equates to between 143,470 and 215,205 USD.
Speaking of the Warhol portfolio, shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood commented, “I think a lot of these designs would work practically. I’m particularly interested in the shape of the toe Warhol has incorporated into a lot of them.”
“As a designer, vintage designs and sketches are always part of your research process and I’ve spent a long time studying these drawings – they definitely appeal to my aesthetic, all of Warhol’s work does in different ways,” Kirkwood told Sotheby’s.
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