Tartans and the Scottish Register

You will learn how tartan is woven, why most clan links date to the nineteenth century, and how the Scottish Register of Tartans and a threadcount record a pattern. Tartan is a patterned wool cloth of crossing bands that form repeating setts, and those setts can now be checked in thousands of Register records.

What cloth counts as tartan?

Its Scottish Gaelic name is breacan, meaning many colors, and in American English it is often called plaid. The page explains that tartan is made of crossing horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colors, from simple two-color checks to intricate motifs with over twenty hues. It began as woven wool and remains strongly linked to Scotland and to the kilt, while specific patterns are also linked to clans, families, regions, military uniforms and organizational branding. The English and Scots word may come from French tiretaine for linsey-woolsey cloth, from Gaelic tarsainn meaning across, or from French tartarin for Tartar cloth, and it is unrelated to tarlatan. Originally the word described a type of weave, and as late as the 1820s some tartan cloth was described as plain-colored without a pattern. Today the word also describes the pattern itself on paper, plastics, packaging and wall coverings.

How does a sett turn into color on wool?

The pattern of a particular tartan is called its sett, a series of lines at specific widths that cross at right angles and blend into each other. Traditional cloth is a tight staggered two-over-two-under twill of worsted wool, with the weft advancing by one thread at each pass, which leaves a close-up diagonal rib at about forty-five degrees. Where weft crosses warp of the same color you see a solid color, and where it crosses another color you see an equal admixture that reads from a distance as a third halftone blend. That is why two base colors make three perceived colors, while six base colors make fifteen blends and twenty-one perceived colors in total. The more stripes and colors you use, the more blurred and subdued the pattern becomes, and unlike a checkerboard no solid color sits edge to edge with another solid color. Most setts are symmetrical and mirror across two pivot points, while rare asymmetric setts repeat without mirroring, and a very few traditional Scottish tartans use a different count for warp and weft.

What does a threadcount actually record?

A threadcount records the width of each stripe and the colors used, usually in abbreviated form and usually with even numbers to assist manufacture. The first and last threads are the pivots, and a full weaving specification with exact color and weaving details is called a ticket stamp or ticket. There is no single universal way to write it, so you read the marks carefully. A full count at the pivots such as K4 R24 K24 Y4 does not repeat the pivot threads when the pattern mirrors, while a half count at the pivots such as K/2 R24 K24 Y/2 duplicates them before reversing. Older counts without the slash are generally read as full count unless the writer says otherwise, and asymmetric patterns are shown as a full sett between ellipsis marks because the whole sequence starts again. A half sett is enough for a mirroring tartan, and counts can be scaled down for a small item such as a necktie from a six-inch kilt sett to three inches, then scaled back up for kilt cloth. Before the nineteenth century the weft could be up to one-third thicker than the warp, which made a rectangular pattern unless the weft count was adjusted, and a handful of traditional tartans still use a non-square sett on purpose. For a closer look at notation, see how a threadcount is written and compare the pivot marks before you trust a copy.

Where did clan links come from?

With one exception dated 1618 and another dating from around 1703 to 1715, neither of which appears to have survived, tartans named for Scottish clans mostly date to the early to mid-nineteenth century, with a few dating to the late eighteenth century at the earliest. The page calls the older idea of an ancient identifying system the Great Tartan Myth and the Tartan Cult, and notes that district patterns existed for centuries without working as clan uniforms. Early portraits often show sitters in several tartans at once, and none matches the later clan pattern now sold under the same name. David Morier's painting of the Highland charge at Culloden shows eight Highlanders in more than twenty different tartans, very few of which resemble present clan setts. Writers also point out that friend was distinguished from foe by a cockade or plant sprig in the bonnet rather than by sett. The working explanation is that regional patterns, regimental uniform tartans from 1725 onward, and personal tartans of nobles came together, then makers and societies attached clan names after demand rose around 1815. The detailed history of tartan traces that shift through portraits, surviving cloth and society records.

What changed after the Dress Act was repealed?

Tartan had become a symbol of Scottish identity especially from the seventeenth century onward, even though the Dress Act of 1746 banned Highland dress for men and boys north of the River Forth for about two generations after the Jacobite rising of 1745. The ban did not cover all tartan, bagpipes or Gaelic, and women, noblemen and soldiers continued to wear it, but everyday Highland use was broken and commercial production moved toward Lowland factory villages. William Wilson and Son of Bannockburn, founded around 1765, became the dominant maker, standardized setts and dyes, and recorded more than two hundred setts in an 1819 Key Pattern Book of about two hundred and fifty designs. Many were numbered, named for places, or given fanciful names such as Rob Roy, Coburg or Caledonia, rather than clan names. On 8 April 1815 the Highland Society of London asked chiefs to send authenticated samples, many chiefs did not know their pattern, several turned to Wilsons for a design, and some adopted a regimental tartan with small changes. The 1822 visit of George IV to Scotland then fixed the clan idea in the public mind, Wilsons expanded its named patterns, advertisements began to stress true and original family connections, and later books repeated invented or erroneous setts that weavers still supplied because buyers asked for them.

What does the Register hold today?

Modern tartans are registered for organizations, individuals and commemorative purposes, with thousands of designs in the Scottish Register of Tartans, and tartans also exist in Africa, East and South Asia and Eastern Europe. The oldest tartan-style twill cloth is around three thousand years old and was found in Xinjiang in China, while in Britain the third-century Falkirk tartan is a simple Border check in undyed light and dark wool. The earliest complex dyed wool sample in Scotland is the sixteenth-century Glen Affric tartan in green, brown, red and yellow, and the earliest certain written reference by name is in the Treasurer accounts of 1532 to 1533 for a tartan coat given to the king. The nineteenth-century Highland Revival then popularized tartan globally with Highland dress and the Scottish diaspora, and today it is used worldwide in clothing, accessories and design. The Cockburn Collection of fifty-six samples from about 1810 to 1825, the Highland Society collection with thirty-four authenticated specimens and about forty others, and later databases all show how often the same pattern carried different names. Only a chief can make a clan tartan official, some clans adopted patterns by custom, and the Lord Lyon stopped recording clan tartans after the Scottish Register of Tartans launched in 2009. For how to check status, color codes and designer notes, use the guide to the Scottish Register alongside the threadcount.

How can you read a tartan before you choose it?

Start with the widest bands, called the under check, ground, background or base, then read the thin contrasting over check, paired tram lines, and any guard lines that edge a bright line. Remember that natural dyes used before the mid-nineteenth century, such as lichens, alder bark, bilberry, cochineal, heather, indigo, woad and yellow bedstraw, were replaced by artificial dyes that were easier and more economical, so the same sett looks different depending on the palette. Modern means darker and fully saturated, ancient or old colors mean lighter as if aged, weathered or faded means lighter still, and muted sits between modern and ancient and is thought closest to early natural dye color. Two mills can still differ in the same palette because there is no exact color standard and saturation involves artistic license. Recent Canadian provincial tartans from the 1950s and United States state tartans from the 1980s sometimes assign green to prairies or forests, blue to lakes and rivers and yellow to crops, but for Scottish patterns the idea that colors carry fixed meanings is modern. Pull the Register entry and the threadcount together, write down the pivot sequence, name the under check and over check, and ask the weaver which palette was used before you order cloth.