Flamboyant Fashion for a Welsh Noble Man
, 22 Mai 2019
Recently, we’ve been privileged to accept a fabulous new accession into our collection. It is a set of three silk garments which belonged to Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet, who lived between 1749 and 1789. He owned vast areas of land in Wales, was active in politics and was a great patron of the arts. You can find out more about him here:
Image of painting of Watkin Williams-Wynn from our 'Collections Online'
Small pastel portrait from the museum's collections
As part of Sir Watkin’s lavish lifestyle came an opulent wardrobe. The garments we have acquired are a matching set of waistcoat and breeches made from grey silk, woven with silver metal thread, silk embroidery and metal thread trim,
sylw - (4)
Dear Hilary Peters,
Thank you very much for your comment. Eighteenth-century silks are particularly fragile and we can only justify putting such objects on display for a limited period of time in order to minimise exposure to light, which can be very damaging to fibres and dyes.
We always aim to rotate our displays, so Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn’s costume may yet go on display at some point in the future. You can check whether the individual items of clothing are on display at any time by looking them up on our website Collections Online. To do this, simply copy and paste the accession numbers in the image captions (for instance, F2019.21.1) into the search bar at https://museum.wales/collections/online.
Best wishes,
Marc
Digital Team
Dear Stephen Foot,
Many thanks for your enquiry. The donor of these items wishes to remain anonymous, so I'm afraid that we're unable to relay this information to you. We're glad that you enjoyed the article.
Best wishes,
Marc
Digital Team