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Arts feature

The mysterious world of British folk costume

Christopher Howse on the transformative power of folk costume

25 February 2023

9:00 AM

25 February 2023

9:00 AM

In a remarkable photograph by Benjamin Stone, from around 1899, six men in breeches of a criss-cross floral pattern hold up great reindeer antlers. (Carbon dating of these objects produced the year 1066, plus or minus 80.) A man in a bowler hat holds a squeeze box and on the right a serious-faced boy stands with a hobby-horse head emerging from the cloth that swathes him.

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