My great grandmother at one point told my mother a few stories about her father who was born in Scotland and later moved to Canada. He lived in Scotland between the late 1880's to the really early 1900's. She told my mother that he worked part time as a mime, and that she even found a photo of him in his costume when she was younger, but when she brought it to her father he burned the photo. She said that in the photo he was wearing cookie buttons. So I'm wondering if there is any historical accuracy to this, or if my great grandmother was just going a bit crazy before she passed away.
Likely your ancestor was not a mime but had a part in a pantomime, a very English theatrical form now generally called a panto. It evolved from a combination of the costumed court masques of the Tudors and Stuarts and the standard characters of the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, like Pantaloon, Harlequin, the Doctor ( who also popped up in village Mummer's Plays) and for a story often had fairy tales, like Aladdin or Puss in Boots. The first whiteface clown, Joseph Grimaldi, was immensely popular as a harlequin in pantomimes and probably did more than anyone else to create the genre in the early 1800's. It's become sort of a Christmas thing and has lots of traditions, like men's parts played by women ( in the 1800's, that was an opportunity to show off their ankles), women's parts played by men ( usually comical crones and hags), lots of interaction with the audience, painfully bad jokes, fancy costumes ( which might indeed once have included cookie buttons), and often a local or national celebrity was pulled into the show.
The Victoria and Albert Museum has a nice display on the history of the panto on its website.
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-pantomime
And the royals sometimes got into the act:
https://people.com/royals/queen-elizabeth-princess-margaret-holiday-costumes-display/