Travelling through time requires a wardrobe of different costumes, as Longleat Librarian Edwina Penge uncovered.
 
The Wiltshire estate is currently showcasing The Festival of Light, a ‘Journey through Time,’ taking guests through Ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt as well as the medieval period and into the imaginative world of Shakespeare via A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth.
 
‘Threads of Time’ is a complementary exhibition in Longleat House highlighting costumes from different eras.
 
“Costume books are a staple of country house libraries and Longleat has some fine examples. In this display, a selection of our historic costume books richly illustrates the clothing worn in several of the eras which The Festival of Light recreates,” said Edwina.
 
She added that Longleat’s seven libraries hold some 44,000 books and a significant number of these are well-dressed in their own right.
 
“The ‘Threads of Time’ display features several jewel-coloured leather bindings generously decorated in gilt; these are by top London bookbinders of the nineteenth-century,” she said.
 
“The books also show different printing techniques, and their illustrations are often hand-coloured to finish.
 
“A particularly fine inclusion is Paulo Mercuri’s engravings of medieval Italian clothing; this work was used by the Pre-Raphaelite painters to research period costume,” she added.
 
The costume of Shakespearean Faerie is also represented in the recognisable illustrations of Arthur Rackham accompanying A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 
 
Longleat has a first edition of this work which is one of 1,000 vellum bound copies also signed by the illustrator, who died in 1939.
 
An intimate guided tour of the private libraries is available, but the ‘Threads of Time' Exhibition is part of a house tour available to book alongside The Festival of Light tickets on longleat.co.uk