Welsh Costume: The Survival of Tradition or National Icon?

Abstract

In order to attempt to assess the development of the idea of Welsh national costume, it is necessary to look at the situation prior to 1830, at the influences which affected the situation in Wales in the mid nineteenth century and then in the later nineteenth century. It is not within the remit of this paper to investigate in detail all of the ideas and influences which were to affect the expression of Welsh national identity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but to concentrate on one extremely visual aspect of it as expressed through clothing. Undoubtedly by 1908 when Curnow Vosper painted A Market Day in Wales a very definite idea existed of what Welsh national dress should be. Depicted here is an intentional image created by an artist, a demonstration of an outside's view of Welshness, and not typical rural dress in general within Wales, certainly in the immediate pre-First World War period when this picture was painted (Fig. 1).