Exhibition at Bath’s Fashion Museum tells story of mittens and more over last 400 years

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Gloves worn by monarchs, soldiers, and Luke Skywalker in one of the Star Wars films, are to go on show at the Fashion Museum in Bath.

Mittens, gauntlets and driving gloves all feature in the exhibition, which tells the story of the item of clothing over the last 400 years.

Gloves worn by queens may attract much of the attention. Grand ceremonial gloves worn by Elizabeth I and II at their coronations almost four centuries apart will be on display.

A glove made in Ireland in the 1830s of the type favoured by Queen Victoria can also be viewed. Its leather is so fine that it can be balled up into a walnut shell.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Long gauntlet gloves worn by Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back. Photograph: Fashion Museum Bath

Also bound to provoke interest is a pair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s driving gloves. However, the doeskin gloves were used for horse carriage rather than car journeys.

Movie fans may want to see the gloves worn by Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, as he battled a wampa ice monster on the snowy Planet Hoth in the opening scenes of The Empire Strikes Back.

A real spaceman’s glove – one worn in in the 1980s by the Soviet cosmonaut Col Aleksandr Volkov – will be on display, as will a pair of combat gloves worn by a British commander in Afghanistan in 2012/13.

Many of the gloves are on loan from the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London. The exhibition will also focus on the British glove industry. At one time there were hundreds of glovemakers in the towns and villages of Somerset, Dorset and west Wiltshire.

Rosemary Harden, the Fashion Museum’s manager and an honorary glover, said: “The display will feature groups of gloves and will focus on uncovering unique and different stories, while also celebrating the incredible craftsmanship and skills involved in this often overlooked area of fashion.”