page_title: Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover
section_title: 'Welsh Costume'
hierarchical_section_title: Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover / 'Welsh Costume'
caption_attribution_description: Cambrian Costumes Welsh girl in costume
context_page_description: Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover, born Augusta Waddington, was a Welsh heiress, best known as a patron of the Welsh arts.
context_section_description: At the Cardiff Eisteddfod of 1834, she won first prize for her essay on The Advantages resulting from the Preservation of the Welsh language and National Costume of Wales which was published in Welsh and English in 1836. She probably commissioned a series of watercolours of Welsh costumes which illustrate costumes worn by women in south Wales and Cardiganshire, 13 of which were reproduced as hand-coloured prints soon after 1834 (but were not published with the essay). These were little more than fashion prints for herself and friends to create dresses for themselves and their servants to be worn on special occasions, especially fancy dress balls. Although she was keen to see the women of Wales dressed in home-spun Welsh wool rather than the light cheap cottons which were becoming popular by the 1830s, there is very little evidence to show that she had any influence on the wearing of Welsh costume other than by her servants, family and friends, and there is no firm evidence to suggest that she influenced what was later adopted as the national costume of Wales.
  She did encourage the production of traditional stripes and checks in woollen cloth and offered prizes for good examples of these at Eisteddfodau, but there were few entrants, with the weaver of Gwenfrwd mill, on her own estate, taking many of the prizes.
caption: One of Augusta Hall's Welsh costume watercolours, 1830
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