When I was a child my gloves were knitted from wool. Mittens were warmer than gloves but not really very cool at school especially if they were joined with a long strip of elastic than ran up your sleeves! Nowadays you can pay a lot of money for a pair of gloves to wear in the mountains, especially in winter. Some of the specifications are amazing.
Take Black Diamond Women's Guide Gloves, rated second in a review of winter gloves for women in this month's The Great Outdoors magazine. They have a retail price of £160 and are "beautifully constructed from supple soft shell and goatskin, [with a] seriously warm liner glove, which is a double whammy of PrimaLoft and boiled wool insulation".
Perhaps a bit more realistic would be Dexshell Ultra Weather Winter Gloves, rated first amongst men's winter gloves by TGO magazine. Priced at £45, they are made from "Taslan polyester, textured anti-slip PU, Porelle membrane, PrimaLoft Gold with CrossCore, polyester fleece". Well, I 've heard of Primaloft but not Porelle or Crosscore (links provided if you are interested).
Over the years I have owned many pairs of gloves and I do have quite cold hands. It takes about an hour for my hands to warm up if they have got cold. My circulation system is prioritising my heart and lungs but an hour is a long time compared to most people when exercising.
For day to day use in summer, my Trekmates thin fleece gloves are fine. If it gets a bit colder, I have some slightly thicker Montane fleece gloves and a pair of liner gloves that I can also put on. This traps a layer of air between them. You can do most things with them on but despite the fact that they have "touchscreen compatible fingertips", I usually have to take a glove off to use my phone. Also managing a map or route directions can force you take one or both gloves off. Not to mention blowing your nose!
In both cases if the gloves get wet, they are still fairly warm and I can partially wring them out by clenching my fists. Nevertheless, the idea of waterproof gloves did seem attractive. So I bought a pair of 'Sealskin' waterproof gloves. At first, these were waterproof but less so with wear and tear. However, the problem is that for the reasons given above you end up having to take them off and put them back on again over wet hands. Because they have a cloth lining they are really hard to put back on. In the end you have to wear liner gloves so that you can get the Sealskins off and on and the liner gloves get wet. You've sealed the water in rather than out.
For winter use, I am currently using Ejendals Tegera Thermal Waterproof Work Gloves from workgloves.co.uk. They are a bit fluffier inside than the Sealskins so I can get them on and off more easily and the fluffiness helps to warm wet hands. They are really warm, genuinely waterproof and pretty cheap at £20. In fact all the gloves on this site are very reasonably priced. However, they do need a bit of elastic sown around the cuffs so that the sleeves of your waterproof jacket will easily slip over them.
If I am doing things with my hands like navigating or holding poles, I do find gloves more convenient than mittens but if it gets really cold, go for Dachstein Mitts. Your fingers keep each other warm and you can put your thumb into the fingers department if you want to. They are made oversize and then boiled to shrink them so that they become very close knit. They will keep your hands toasty. You could get these from Needle Sports for example. They even come in a range of colours! Wool gloves will get wet but wool does stay warm when it's wet.
Addendum: This Safety Supply Company is amazing value!
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