El tartán ( gaélico escocés : breacan [ˈpɾʲɛxkən] ) es una tela estampada con bandas horizontales y verticales cruzadas en múltiples colores, formando patrones rectangulares simples o complejos. Los tartanes se originaron en lana tejida, pero ahora se hacen en otros materiales. El tartán se asocia particularmente con Escocia , y los kilts escoceses casi siempre tienen patrones de tartán.
Fuera de Escocia, el tartán a veces también se conoce como " plaid " (particularmente en América del Norte); sin embargo, en Escocia, un plaid es una pieza grande de tela escocesa que se puede usar de varias maneras.
El tartán tradicional se hace con bandas alternas de hilos de colores (preteñidos) tejidos en urdimbre y trama que suelen coincidir en un patrón de sarga 2/2 simple . De cerca, este patrón forma líneas diagonales cortas alternas donde se cruzan diferentes colores; desde más atrás, da la apariencia de nuevos colores mezclados a partir de los originales. Los bloques de color resultantes se repiten vertical y horizontalmente en un patrón distintivo de rectángulos y líneas conocido como sett .
El tartán escocés se asociaba originalmente con las Tierras Altas . Los primeros tartanes eran propios de localidades locales, en lugar de clanes escoceses específicos ; aunque, como los clanes vivían en distritos y regiones particulares y los controlaban, de manera informal la gente podía identificar a grandes rasgos a ciertos clanes y familias a través de los patrones asociados con su propia localidad. Al igual que otros materiales, los diseños de tartán eran producidos por tejedores locales para gustos locales, utilizando los tintes naturales más disponibles .
La Ley de Vestimenta de 1746 intentó poner a los clanes guerreros bajo el control del gobierno al prohibir la vestimenta de las Tierras Altas para todos los hombres y niños civiles de las Tierras Altas, ya que entonces era un elemento importante de la cultura gaélica escocesa .
Cuando se derogó la ley en 1782, el tartán dejó de ser un vestido común para la mayoría de los habitantes de las Tierras Altas. Se adoptó más ampliamente como el vestido nacional simbólico de toda Escocia cuando el rey Jorge IV usó un kilt de tartán en su visita a Escocia en 1822 ; la reina Victoria lo promovió aún más . Esto marcó una era de "tartanería" y "highlandismo" bastante politizados .
Aunque se cree que el primer tartán uniforme data de 1713 (con alguna evidencia de uso miliciano anterior), no fue hasta principios del siglo XIX que se crearon patrones para clanes escoceses específicos; [1] la mayoría de los tradicionales se establecieron entre 1815 y 1850. La invención de tintes artificiales en la era victoriana significó que se podía producir una multitud de patrones a bajo costo; la tela de moda de tartán producida en masa se aplicó a una visión nostálgica (y cada vez más aristocrática y rentable) de la historia escocesa.
Hoy en día, el tartán ya no se limita a los textiles , sino que también se utiliza como nombre para el patrón en sí, independientemente del medio. El uso del tartán se ha extendido fuera de Escocia, especialmente a países que han sido influenciados por la cultura escocesa . Sin embargo, los patrones de estilo tartán han existido durante siglos en algunas otras culturas, como Japón, donde las complejas telas kōshi datan al menos del siglo XVIII, y Rusia (a veces con hilo de oro y plata) desde al menos principios del siglo XIX. Los chals shúkà masai , el tejido mathra butanés y la tela madrás india también suelen tener patrones de tartán, distintos del estilo escocés.
La palabra inglesa y escocesa tartan posiblemente se deriva del francés tiretaine que significa ' tela de lana y lino '. [2] [3] [4] Otras hipótesis son que se deriva del gaélico escocés tarsainn o tarsuinn , que significa 'a través' o 'cruzando'; [3] [4] o del francés tartarin o tartaryn (que aparece en 1454 escrito tartyn ) [5] que significa ' tela tártara '. [2] No está relacionada con la palabra superficialmente similar tarlatan , que se refiere a una muselina de tejido muy abierto similar a la estopilla . Tartan es a la vez un sustantivo colectivo ("12 metros de tartán") y un sustantivo contable ("12 tartanes diferentes").
Hoy en día, el término tartán hace referencia a patrones de colores, aunque originalmente no tenía por qué estar formado por un patrón, ya que hacía referencia al tipo de tejido; hasta la década de 1820, algunas telas de tartán se describían como "de colores lisos... sin patrón". [6] [7] Las telas estampadas de las Tierras Altas de Escocia, donde se hablaba gaélico , se llamaban breacan , que significa "muchos colores". Con el tiempo, los significados de tartán y breacan se combinaron para describir un determinado tipo de patrón en un determinado tipo de tela. [7]
El patrón de un tartán en particular se denomina sett . El sett está formado por una serie de líneas de anchos específicos que se cruzan en ángulos rectos y se mezclan entre sí; [7] a veces se utiliza el término más largo setting . [8] Sett puede referirse a la presentación visual mínima del patrón de tartán completo o a una representación textual de este (en un número de hilos ). [7]
Hoy en día, el término tartán se utiliza de forma más general para describir el patrón, no limitado a los textiles, que aparece en medios como papel, plásticos, envases y revestimientos de paredes. [9] [7] [1] [10]
En Norteamérica, el término plaid se usa comúnmente para referirse al tartán. [11] [12] [13] [a] Plaid , derivado del gaélico escocés plaide que significa 'manta', [16] [b] se usó por primera vez para cualquier prenda rectangular, a veces hecha de tartán, [c] que podía usarse de varias maneras: el tartán con cinturón ( breacan féile ) o "gran kilt" que precedió al kilt moderno ; el arisaid ( earasaid ), un chal grande que podía envolverse en un vestido; y varios tipos de capa de hombro, como el tartán completo y el tartán con vuelo . Con el tiempo, el tartán se usó para describir las mantas en sí. [12] En tiempos anteriores, el término plaiding [20] o pladding [21] a veces se usaba para referirse a la tela de tartán.
El Registro Escocés de Tartanes proporciona la siguiente definición resumida de tartán: [22]
El tartán (el diseño) es un patrón que comprende dos o más rayas de colores sólidos diferentes que pueden ser similares pero que generalmente tienen proporciones diferentes y se repiten en una secuencia definida. La secuencia de colores de la urdimbre (hilos longitudinales) se repite en el mismo orden y tamaño en la trama (hilos transversales). La mayoría de estos patrones (o juegos) son simétricos, es decir, el patrón se repite en el mismo orden de colores y proporciones en todas las direcciones desde los dos puntos de pivote. En los patrones asimétricos menos comunes, la secuencia de colores se repite en bloques en lugar de alrededor de pivotes alternados, pero el tamaño y la secuencia de colores de la urdimbre y la trama siguen siendo los mismos.
En más detalle, la tela tradicional de tartán es un tejido de sarga 2/2 apretado y escalonado de lana peinada : la trama horizontal (también trama o relleno ) se teje en una disposición simple de dos sobre dos debajo de la urdimbre vertical fija , avanzando un hilo en cada pasada. [15] Como cada hilo en la trama cruza hilos en la urdimbre, el escalonamiento de uno significa que cada hilo de urdimbre también cruzará dos hilos de trama. El resultado, cuando se examina el material de cerca, es un patrón diagonal característico de 45 grados de "costillas" donde se cruzan diferentes colores. [7] [23] Cuando un hilo en la trama cruza hilos del mismo color en la urdimbre, esto produce un color sólido en el tartán, mientras que un hilo de trama que cruza hilos de urdimbre de un color diferente produce una mezcla igual de los dos colores alternados, produciendo la apariencia de un tercer color - una mezcla de medios tonos - cuando se ve desde más atrás. [24] [7] [22] (El efecto es similar a la impresión de medios tonos multicolor , o al rayado cruzado en el arte con lápices de colores.) [7] Por lo tanto, un conjunto de dos colores base produce tres colores diferentes, incluida una mezcla, que aumenta cuadráticamente con el número de colores base; por lo que un conjunto de seis colores base produce quince mezclas y un total de veintiún colores percibidos diferentes. [7] [25] [d] Esto significa que cuantas más rayas y colores se utilicen, más borroso y tenue se vuelve el patrón del tartán. [7] [24] A diferencia de los patrones de cuadros simples o de dados (como un tablero de ajedrez), ningún color sólido en un tartán aparece al lado de otro color sólido, solo una mezcla [7] (los colores sólidos pueden tocarse en sus esquinas). [26]
James D. Scarlett (2008) ofreció una definición de un patrón de tartán habitual (algunos tipos de tartán se desvían de los detalles de esta definición ): [7]
La unidad del patrón de tartán, el sett , es un cuadrado, compuesto por una serie de rectángulos, cuadrados y oblongos, dispuestos simétricamente alrededor de un cuadrado central. Cada uno de estos elementos aparece cuatro veces, a intervalos de noventa grados, y cada uno está rotado noventa grados con respecto a sus compañeros. Las proporciones de los elementos están determinadas por los anchos relativos de las rayas que los forman.
La secuencia de colores de los hilos en el juego (el diseño mínimo del tartán, que se debe duplicar [7] - "el ADN de un tartán"), [27] comienza en un borde y se invierte o (raramente) se repite en lo que se denominan puntos de pivote o pivotes . [28] En el diagrama A, el juego comienza en el primer pivote, se invierte en el segundo pivote, continúa, luego se invierte nuevamente en el siguiente pivote y continuará de esta manera horizontalmente. En el diagrama B, el juego procede de la misma manera que en la urdimbre pero verticalmente. Los diagramas ilustran la construcción de un tartán simétrico [29] (también simétrico , [27] reflectante , [27] inverso , [30] o especular ) [31] [e] . Sin embargo, en un raro tartán asimétrico [33] ( asimétrico , [27] o no reversible ) [33] [f] , el juego no se invierte en los pivotes, solo se repite en ellos. [g] Un término antiguo para el último tipo es patrón de mejillas o mejillas . [35] Además, algunos tartanes (muy pocos entre los tartanes escoceses tradicionales) no tienen exactamente el mismo juego para la urdimbre y la trama. Esto significa que la urdimbre y la trama tendrán diferentes números de hilos . [h] Los patrones asimétricos y de urdimbre y trama diferentes son más comunes en la tela de madrás y algunas otras tradiciones de tejido que en el tartán escocés.
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Un tartán se registra contando los hilos de cada color que aparecen en el juego. [i] El conteo de hilos (o threadcount , thread-count ) no solo describe el ancho de las rayas en un juego, sino también los colores utilizados (normalmente abreviados). [27] Por lo general, cada número en un conteo de hilos es un número par [42] para ayudar en la fabricación. El primer y el último hilo del conteo de hilos son los pivotes. [28] Un conteo de hilos combinado con información exacta del color y otros detalles del tejido se conoce como sello de ticket [43] o simplemente ticket . [44]
No existe una forma estandarizada universal para escribir un recuento de subprocesos, [37] pero los diferentes sistemas son fáciles de distinguir. A modo de ejemplo sencillo:
En todos estos casos, el resultado es un recuento de hilos de medio juego , que representa el enhebrado antes de que el patrón se refleje y se complete; un recuento de hilos de juego completo para un tartán reflejado (simétrico) es redundante. [37] También se puede utilizar una "/" entre dos códigos de color (por ejemplo, "W/Y24" para "blanco/amarillo 24") para crear un recuento de hilos aún más abreviado para tartanes simples en los que la mitad del patrón de medio juego es diferente de la otra solo en la forma de un intercambio de color; [45] pero este no es un estilo común de recuento de hilos.
Varios escritores y bases de datos de tartán no utilizan un conjunto consistente de nombres de colores y abreviaturas, [46] por lo que un recuento de hilos puede no ser universalmente comprensible sin una clave/leyenda de colores . Algunos registradores prefieren comenzar un recuento de hilos en el pivote con el nombre del color (o abreviatura) que está primero en orden alfabético (por ejemplo, si hay un pivote blanco y uno azul, comience con el azul), [27] pero esto es en realidad arbitrario.
Aunque los recuentos de hilos son bastante específicos, se pueden modificar según el tamaño deseado del tartán. Por ejemplo, el tamaño de un tartán (p. ej., 6 pulgadas cuadradas, un tamaño típico para kilts) [27] puede ser demasiado grande para caber en la cara de una corbata . En este caso, el recuento de hilos se reduciría en proporción (p. ej., a 3 pulgadas por lado). [37] En algunas obras, el recuento de hilos se reduce al número par más pequeño de hilos (a menudo hasta 2) necesarios para reproducir con precisión el diseño; [28] en tal caso, a menudo es necesario aumentar el recuento de hilos proporcionalmente para el uso típico en kilts y cuadros.
Antes del siglo XIX, el tartán se tejía a menudo con hilo para la trama que era hasta 1/3 más grueso que el hilo fino usado para la urdimbre, [7] lo que daría como resultado un patrón rectangular en lugar de cuadrado; la solución fue ajustar el número de hilos de la trama para devolver el patrón a cuadrado, [23] o hacerlo no cuadrado a propósito, como todavía se hace en un puñado de tartanes tradicionales. [h] El grosor desigual de los hilos de urdimbre y trama también podría contribuir a una apariencia rayada en lugar de cuadriculada en algunas muestras de tartán. [47]
Los colores predominantes de un tartán (las bandas más anchas) se denominan under-check (o under check , undercheck , under-cheque ); [48] a veces se utilizan los términos ground , [k] background , [50] o base [50] en su lugar, especialmente si solo hay un color dominante. Las líneas finas y contrastantes se denominan over-check [51] [50] (también over-stripe o overstripe ). [52] Los over-checks en pares a veces se denominan tram lines , tramlines o tram tracks . [53] Los over-checks brillantes a veces están bordeados a cada lado (generalmente ambos), para un contraste adicional, por líneas finas adicionales, a menudo negras, llamadas guard lines o guards . [53] Históricamente, el tejedor William Wilson & Son de Bannockburn a veces tejía cuadros brillantes en seda, para darle un poco más de brillo [54] [55] (comercialmente alrededor de 1820-30, pero en cuadros de oficiales de regimiento desde al menos 1794). [56] [l] El tartán usado para cuadros (no el tartán con cinturón) a menudo tiene una franja con revés . [57]
Una práctica antigua, hasta el siglo XVIII, era agregar un acento a los cuadros o, a veces, a los kilts en forma de un orillo en tejido de espiga en el borde, de 1 a 3 pulgadas (2,5 a 7,6 cm) de ancho, pero que aún encajaba en el patrón de color del tartán; [57] [58] algunos tejedores modernos todavía producirán algún tartán en este estilo. A veces se usaban orillos más decorativos: las marcas de orillo eran bordes (generalmente en un solo lado) formados al repetir un color del tartán en una banda ancha (a menudo en espiga), a veces bordeados además por una tira delgada de otro color del tartán o decorados en medio del orillo con dos tiras delgadas; estos se usaban típicamente para las partes inferiores de los cuadros y kilts con cinturón, [57] [59] y generalmente eran negros en los tartanes militares, pero podían ser más coloridos en los civiles. [60] Los patrones de orillo más elaborados eran una serie más amplia de rayas estrechas que usaban algunos o todos los colores del tartán; estos se usaban casi exclusivamente en tartanes domésticos (mantas, cortinas, etc.) y en dos lados opuestos de la tela. [60] [57] El muy raro borde total es un orillo de los cuatro lados de un tartán completamente diferente; descrito por Peter Eslea MacDonald (2019) como "una característica extraordinariamente difícil de tejer y puede considerarse como el cenit del arte del tejedor de tartán", [57] solo sobrevive en el tartán de estilo escocés como un puñado de muestras del siglo XVIII (en Escocia [61] y Nueva Escocia , Canadá, pero probablemente todas originarias de Escocia). [62] El estilo también se ha utilizado en Estonia en el tejido de chales/cuadros suurrätt .
El tartán se teje generalmente con urdimbre equilibrada (o simplemente equilibrada ), repitiéndose de manera uniforme desde un punto pivote en el centro hacia afuera y con un juego completo que termina en el orillo exterior; [8] [63] [64] por ejemplo, una pieza de tartán para una manta puede tener 24 juegos de largo y 4 de ancho. Un tejido desplazado , descentrado o desequilibrado es aquel en el que el patrón termina en el borde en el medio de un color pivote; esto se hacía típicamente con piezas destinadas a ser unidas (por ejemplo, para una manta o manta con cinturón) para hacer tramos más grandes de tela con el patrón continuando a través de la costura; [8] [64] si el tartán tenía una marca de orillo o un patrón de orillo, estaba en el otro lado de la urdimbre. [65]
El término tartán duro se refiere a una versión de la tela tejida con hilo muy apretado y sin pelusa, produciendo un material comparativamente más áspero y denso (aunque también más delgado) que el que es típico ahora para los kilts. [66] [67] Fue de uso común hasta la década de 1830. [47] Hay muestras existentes pero poco comunes de tartán duro de principios del siglo XVIII que usan el tejido de espiga más intrincado en lugar de sarga en toda la tela. [68]
Si bien el tartán moderno es principalmente una actividad comercial en grandes telares mecánicos , el tartán fue originalmente el producto de los tejedores rurales de la era preindustrial y puede ser producido por un aficionado dedicado con un telar manual fuerte y estable . [69] [70] [71] Desde alrededor de 1808, el tamaño tradicional de la urdimbre para el tartán es de 37 pulgadas (94 cm), la longitud del codo escocés (los tamaños anteriores eran a veces de 34 y 40 pulgadas). [72] Telfer Dunbar (1979) describe la configuración de esta manera: [72]
El grosor de la caña varía según la textura del material que se va a tejer. Un junquillo de 30 Porter (que contiene 20 hendiduras de la caña) o de 600 cañas, se divide en 600 aberturas de 37 pulgadas de ancho. Veinte de estas aberturas se denominan Porter y en cada abertura se colocan dos hilos, lo que hace 1.200 hilos de urdimbre y otros tantos de trama en una yarda cuadrada de tartán a través de un junquillo de 30 Porter.
Las divisiones también se denominan abolladuras , y los porteadores también se denominan bandas . [73]
Los patrones de tartán tradicionales se pueden dividir en varias clases de estilo. El más básico es un simple cuadro bicolor de bandas gruesas (con o sin cuadros finos superpuestos de uno o más colores). Una variante de este tipo divide una o más de las bandas para formar cuadrados de cuadrados más pequeños en lugar de solo cuadrados grandes y sólidos; un estilo muy favorecido en Vestiarium Scoticum . Un paso más complejo es el cuadro superpuesto, en el que se coloca un tercer color centralmente "encima" o "dentro" (rodeado por) uno de los colores de base del cuadro inferior, lo que proporciona un patrón de cuadrados anidados, al que luego también se le pueden agregar cuadros finos, brillantes y/o negros superpuestos. Otro grupo son los cuadros múltiples, típicamente de dos bandas anchas de color sobre un solo "fondo" dominante (por ejemplo, rojo, azul, rojo, verde, rojo, nuevamente posiblemente con cuadros estrechos superpuestos en contraste). Los tipos mencionados anteriormente se pueden combinar para formar tartanes más complejos. En cualquiera de estos estilos, un cuadro superior a veces no es un color nuevo sino uno de los colores del cuadro inferior "encima" del otro cuadro inferior. Un estilo poco común, tradicionalmente utilizado para los tartanes arisaid ( earasaid ) pero que ya no se usa mucho o nada en Escocia, es un patrón que consiste enteramente en cuadros superiores finos, a veces agrupados, "sobre" un solo color de fondo, generalmente blanco. [74] M. Martin (1703) informó que los colores de línea eran típicamente azul, negro y rojo. [75] No sobreviven ejemplos de este estilo, [76] al menos no en las bases de datos de tartán (puede haber piezas de museo preservadas con tales patrones). [m] Algunos patrones de tartán son más abstractos y no encajan en ninguno de estos estilos, [78] especialmente en la tela de madrás .
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No existen reglas o principios codificados para el diseño de tartán, pero algunos autores han ofrecido algunas opiniones bien fundadas. Banks y de La Chapelle (2007) resumieron, con vistas a un uso amplio y general del tartán, incluso en la moda: "El color -y cómo se trabaja- es fundamental para el diseño de tartán... Por lo tanto, los tartanes deben estar compuestos de colores claros y brillantes, pero lo suficientemente suaves como para combinarse bien y crear así nuevos tonos". James D. Scarlett (2008) señaló: "cuantos más colores se usen al principio, más tenue será el efecto final", [50] o, dicho de forma más precisa, "cuantas más rayas haya en el conjunto y más colores se utilicen, más difuso y 'borroso' será el patrón". [7] Esto no se traduce necesariamente en sutileza; un tartán de muchos colores y rayas puede parecer "cargado". [79]
Scarlett (2008), después de una investigación exhaustiva sobre los patrones históricos de las Tierras Altas (que estaban dominados por un rojo intenso y un verde medio en una proporción aproximadamente igual con el azul oscuro como acento de mezcla, sin tener en cuenta las líneas negras comunes), sugirió que para un estilo equilibrado y tradicional : [7]
Cualquier diseño básico de tartán debe tener como fondo un color de "alto impacto" y otros dos, de los cuales uno debe ser el complemento del primero y el otro un tono más oscuro y neutro; otros colores, introducidos para romper el patrón o como acentos, deben ser una cuestión de gusto. Es importante que ningún color sea tan fuerte como para "inundar" a otro; de lo contrario, la mezcla de colores en el cruce se verá afectada negativamente. ... El tartán es una forma de arte abstracto compleja con un fuerte matiz matemático, muy alejada de un simple cuadro con unas pocas líneas de colores contrastantes esparcidas sobre él.
Scarlett (1990) proporcionó una explicación más general, dejando de lado los estilos tradicionales: [80]
Los colores para el trabajo en tartán deben ser claros e inequívocos y brillantes pero suaves, para dar un buen contraste tanto de color como de brillo y mezclarse bien para dar lugar a tonos claramente nuevos donde dos colores se cruzan sin que ninguno inunde al otro.
Además, Scarlett (1990) sostuvo que "los controles de fondo mostrarán un contraste firme pero no áspero y los controles superiores serán tales que se verán claramente" sobre los colores de los controles inferiores (o "de fondo"). [50] Resumió el resultado total deseado como "una mezcla armoniosa de color y patrón digna de ser considerada como una forma de arte por derecho propio". [81]
La omisión de las líneas negras tradicionales tiene un fuerte efecto suavizante, como en el conjunto de moda Missoni de los años 70 y en muchos patrones de madrás . Un diseño escocés sin negro (ahora el tartán de vestir Mar ) data del siglo XVIII; [82] otro es Ruthven (1842, ), y muchos de los tartanes Ross (por ejemplo, 1886, ), así como varios de los diseños victorianos-eduardianos MacDougal[l] , [83] son otros ejemplos. Varios tartanes modernos también utilizan este efecto, por ejemplo, Canadian Maple Leaf (1964, ). El uso inteligente del negro u otro color oscuro puede producir una percepción visual de profundidad. [84]
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No existe un conjunto de estándares de color exactos para los tonos de tartán; el color del hilo varía de un tejedor a otro incluso para "el mismo" color. [85] Sin embargo, una cierta gama de colores generales son tradicionales en el tartán escocés. Estos incluyen azul (oscuro), carmesí (rosa o rojo oscuro), verde (medio oscuro), negro, gris (medio oscuro), púrpura, rojo (escarlata o brillante), tostado / marrón, blanco (en realidad lana natural sin teñir, llamada lachdann en gaélico), [86] [n] y amarillo. [45] [7] [o] Algunos colores adicionales que se han utilizado con menos frecuencia son el azul celeste (azul claro o cielo), granate y verte (verde brillante o hierba), [45] además de gris claro (como se ve en el tartán Balmoral, aunque a veces se da como lavanda). [89] Desde la apertura de las bases de datos de tartán para el registro de tartanes de nuevo diseño, incluidos muchos con fines organizativos y de moda, se ha involucrado una gama más amplia de colores, como el naranja [90] y el rosa, [91] que no se usaban a menudo (como colores distintos en lugar de como representaciones del rojo) en los antiguos tartanes tradicionales. [p] El Registro Escocés de Tartanes utiliza una larga lista de colores codificados en " colores web " hexadecimales, clasificando grupos de tonos en un conjunto restringido de códigos básicos (pero ampliado sobre la lista tradicional anterior, con opciones adicionales como naranja oscuro, amarillo oscuro, violeta claro, etc.). [92] Esto ayuda a los diseñadores a adaptar su tartán creativo a un esquema de codificación al tiempo que permite a los tejedores producir una aproximación de ese diseño a partir de suministros de hilo fácilmente almacenados.
A mediados del siglo XIX, los tintes naturales que se habían utilizado tradicionalmente en las Tierras Altas [24] [93] [94] [q] (como varios líquenes , corteza de aliso , arándano , cochinilla , brezo , índigo , pastel y paja amarilla ) comenzaron a ser reemplazados por tintes artificiales , que eran más fáciles de usar y más económicos para la floreciente industria del tartán, [95] aunque también menos sutiles. [96] Aunque William Morris en el movimiento Arts and Crafts de finales del siglo XIX intentó revivir el uso de tintes naturales británicos, la mayoría eran de tan bajo rendimiento y tan inconsistentes de una localidad a otra (parte de la razón de la diferenciación histórica del tartán por área) que demostraron tener poco potencial de producción en masa, a pesar de algunos esfuerzos de comercialización de tinte púrpura ( cudbear ) en Glasgow en el siglo XVIII. [95] La lana fina y dura que se usaba para tejer tartán era bastante resistente a los tintes naturales, y algunos baños de tinte requerían días o incluso semanas. [95] El teñido también requería mordientes para fijar los colores de forma permanente, generalmente sales metálicas como el alumbre ; hay registros de 1491 de que se importaba alumbre a Leith , aunque no necesariamente todo para la producción de tartán en particular. [97] Algunos colores de tinte se importaban generalmente, especialmente la cochinilla roja y, en cierta medida, el índigo azul (ambos caros y utilizados para profundizar los tintes nativos), de los Países Bajos , con los que Escocia tenía un amplio comercio desde el siglo XV. [98] También se usaba orina humana envejecida (llamada fual o graith ), como intensificador de color, agente de solubilidad del tinte, fermentador de líquenes y tratamiento final de solidez del color. [99] Todo el tartán fabricado comercialmente hoy en día se colorea con tintes artificiales, no naturales, incluso en las paletas de colores menos saturadas. [100] [101]
Los matices de colores de cualquier tartán establecido se pueden alterar para producir variaciones del mismo tartán. Esta variación de los matices al gusto se remonta al menos al libro de patrones de 1788 del fabricante William Wilson & Son de Bannockburn. [102] Hoy en día, los esquemas o paletas de colores semiestandarizados (lo que los vendedores podrían llamar "combinaciones de colores") [103] se dividen generalmente en moderno , antiguo , apagado y desgastado (a veces con otros nombres, según el tejedor). Estos términos solo se refieren a los niveles relativos de saturación del "colorido" del tinte y no representan tartanes distintos. [104] [105]
Algunas fábricas de tartán en particular han introducido otros esquemas de colores que son exclusivos de ese tejedor y que solo están disponibles en ciertos tartanes. Dos ejemplos son el antiguo de Lochcarron , [105] entre lo moderno y lo antiguo ; y la reproducción de D. C. Dalgliesh , una ligera variación del desgastado , [104] que data de la década de 1940 y se afirma que está basada en muestras del siglo XVIII. [109]
Una observación general sobre los colores antiguo/viejo , desgastado/descolorido y apagado es que reducen de manera bastante uniforme la saturación de todos los colores, mientras que las muestras reales de tartán teñido de forma natural muestran que la práctica histórica era generalmente combinar uno o más colores saturados con uno o más pálidos, para lograr una mayor claridad y profundidad, un "equilibrio armonioso". [110] [105] [104] Según Scarlett (1990): "Los colores eran claros, brillantes y suaves, completamente diferentes del brillo abrasador o la opacidad descolorida de los tartanes modernos". [81]
El mismo tartán en la misma paleta de dos fabricantes (por ejemplo, Colquhoun atenuado de D. C. Dalgliesh y de Strathmore) no combinará exactamente; hay una considerable licencia artística involucrada en cuán exactamente saturado hacer un tono. [101]
El software de generación de tartán puede aproximar la apariencia de un tartán en cualquiera de estas paletas. Los ejemplos que aparecen a continuación son todos del tartán "Príncipe Carlos Eduardo Estuardo": [111]
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Los tartanes escoceses que utilizan dos o más tonos del mismo color básico son bastante raros. El más conocido es el Balmoral de la familia real británica [112] (1853, dos grises, ambos como cuadros inferiores ). Otros incluyen: Akins [113] (1850, dos rojos, uno como over-check y a veces se volvió púrpura), MacBean [114] (1872, dos rojos, uno como over-check y a veces se volvió púrpura), Childers Universal regimental [115] (1907, dos verdes, ambos under-check), Gordon rojo [116] (registrado 1930-1950 pero probablemente considerablemente más antiguo; dos azules y dos rojos, uno de cada uno usado más o menos como over-check), Galloway district hunting/green [117] [118] (1939/1950s, dos verdes, ambos under-check), US Air Force Reserve Pipe Band [119] (1988, dos azules, ambos under-check), McCandlish [120] [121] [122] (1992, tres variantes, todos under-check), Isle of Skye district [123] (1992, tres verdes, todos posiblemente con cuadros bajos, anidados uno dentro del otro), y Chisholm Colonial [124] (2008, dos azules, uno con cuadros altos, el otro casi mezclado con verde). La práctica es más común en tartanes comerciales muy recientes que no tienen asociación con familias o distritos escoceses, como el tartán de la marca de moda Loverboy [125] (2018, tres azules, uno con cuadros altos).
La idea de que los distintos colores utilizados en el tartán tienen un significado específico es puramente moderna, [126] a pesar de una leyenda que dice que los tartanes rojos eran "tartanes de batalla", diseñados para que no mostraran sangre. Solo los tartanes creados recientemente, como los tartanes provinciales y territoriales canadienses (principios de la década de 1950) y los tartanes estatales de los EE. UU. (principios de la década de 1980), se dice que están diseñados con cierto significado simbólico para los colores utilizados. Por ejemplo, el verde a veces representa praderas o bosques, el azul puede representar lagos y ríos, y el amarillo puede representar varios cultivos. [127] En el Registro Escocés de Tartanes (y las bases de datos anteriores), las notas de inspiración de color a menudo las registra el diseñador de un tartán. Sin embargo, no existe un conjunto común de "motivos" de colores o patrones de tartán con significados alusivos que sea compartido por todos los diseñadores. [r]
De manera más abstracta, desde una perspectiva de crítica de arte , el historiador del diseño Richard Martin (1988) escribió sobre los tartanes como diseños y el tartán como una clase textil que no tiene significados verdaderamente endémicos u objetivados, sino que es un arte que "tiene la propiedad de ser un recipiente o contenedor de significado, una forma de diseño que existe no solo en la historia sino a través de la historia", capaz de transmitir significados contextuales radicalmente diferentes, incluso contradictorios, "siempre cambiantes y en constante evolución" a través de la transmutación sociocultural del uso del tejido. Así, el tartán podría pasar de ser un símbolo de rebelión antisindical y jacobita de las Tierras Altas a un emblema de lealtad panbritánica al imperio en el espacio de dos generaciones, o servir a diferentes mercados de la moda en las mismas décadas recientes como un símbolo de estatus sartorial de valores tradicionales y una bandera rebelde punk y grunge. [130]
Los escritores romanos clásicos hicieron varias referencias a los galos continentales , al sur de Britania, que vestían ropas rayadas o abigarradas; el latín parece haber carecido de una palabra exacta para "a cuadros". Por ejemplo, Virgilio en la Eneida (29-19 a. C., libro VIII, línea 660) describió a los galos como virgatis lucent sagulis (o sagalis ), que significa algo así como "brillan con capas rayadas" o "sus capas están rayadas de forma brillante". [131] [132] [133] Otros escritores utilizaron palabras como pictae y virgatae [134] con traducciones como "jaspeado", "abigarrado", "particolorido", etc. Scarlett (1990) advierte: "Lo que no es razonable es la suposición fácil de muchos autores modernos de que cada vez que se utilizaba una de estas palabras, o algo parecido, se refería a tartán". [135] Es posible que en ocasiones se haya querido decir así, o que el autor simplemente haya querido decir rayas lineales como la tela de seersucker . Tanto Scarlett como Thompson (1992) critican la suposición insostenible de algunos escritores modernos anteriores (por ejemplo, James Grant, 1886) de que los galos debían de andar por ahí con tartanes de clan. [135] [131] Los romanos escribieron en particular sobre los galos que llevaban braccae (pantalones) a rayas. E. G. Cody, en sus comentarios en su edición de 1885 de la Historie of Scotland de John Lesley , planteó la hipótesis de que en realidad se trataba de un préstamo galo y que estaba emparentado con el gaélico breacan . [134] Esta es una de las muchas "leyendas del tartán" que no está bien aceptada; más bien, los lingüistas modernos consideran que braccae es un cognado del inglés breeches , el gaélico briogais ("pantalones"), etc. [136]
El primer tejido similar al tartán documentado en Gran Bretaña, conocido como "tartán de Falkirk", [137] data del siglo III d. C. [138] Fue descubierto en Falkirk en Stirlingshire, Escocia, cerca del Muro de Antonino . El fragmento, conservado en el Museo Nacional de Escocia , fue introducido en la boca de una olla de barro que contenía casi 2000 monedas romanas . [139] El tartán de Falkirk tiene un diseño simple de "cuadros fronterizos" , de lana clara y oscura sin teñir. [s] Otra evidencia de este período es el fragmento sobreviviente de una estatua del emperador romano Caracalla , que alguna vez formó parte del arco triunfal de Volubilis completado en 217 d. C. Representa a un prisionero picto de Caledonia con pantalones de tartán (representados mediante el tallado de un diseño a cuadros y luego incrustaciones de aleaciones de bronce y plata para darle una apariencia abigarrada). [140] [t] Basándose en dicha evidencia, el investigador de tartán James D. Scarlett (1990) cree que el tartán escocés es "de origen picto o anterior", [141] aunque Brown (2012) señala que no hay forma de probar o refutar esto. [142]
Se cree que las primeras formas de tartán como esta se inventaron en tiempos prerromanos y habrían sido populares entre los habitantes de las provincias romanas del norte [143] [144] así como en otras partes del norte de Europa como Jutlandia , donde prevalecía el mismo patrón, [145] [146] [147] y la Suecia de la Edad del Bronce . [148]
El hecho de que se haya elegido el tejido de sarga , incluso en la antigüedad, probablemente no sea casualidad: "el tejido de sarga simple (2/2) para un calibre de hilo determinado produce una tela un 50% más pesada [más densa] –y, por lo tanto, más resistente a la intemperie– que el tejido simple 1/1 ". [7] Según Scarlett (2008): [7]
Existen razones sólidas para pensar que este tipo de tejido estampado se ha desarrollado casi automáticamente en comunidades aisladas y autosuficientes... Es poco probable que estas comunidades posean grandes tinas para teñir, por lo que no pueden teñir piezas de tela tejida; no se dispone de procesos como el batik y el teñido anudado... Las rayas son la solución práctica, ya que utilizan pequeñas cantidades de un color a la vez y se intercalan con otros colores, pero el alcance es limitado...; las rayas transversales a ambos colores iluminan los colores y añaden muchas mezclas. A partir de ahí, es realmente solo una cuestión de organizarse; el patrón ahora geométrico se reduce a una unidad pequeña, más fácil de recordar y seguir en un mundo donde se escribía poco; se simplifica aún más al dividirlo en dos mitades iguales y, con la trama como urdimbre, el patrón de la trama se puede seguir desde la urdimbre.
Hay poca evidencia escrita o pictórica sobre el tartán (y mucho menos sobre la tela de tartán sobreviviente) de la era medieval . El uso del tartán en Gran Bretaña entre el tartán de Falkirk del siglo III y las muestras, escritos y arte del siglo XVI no está claro. [149] [150] Cosmo Innes (1860) escribió que, según las hagiografías medievales , los escoceses de los siglos VII y VIII "usaban capas de colores abigarrados, aparentemente de fabricación casera". [151] Basándose en las similitudes de los tartanes utilizados por varios clanes, incluidos los Murray , los Sutherland y los Gordon , y la historia de sus interacciones familiares a lo largo de los siglos, Thomas Innes de Learney estimó que un patrón "principal" regional, de un estilo más general, podría datar del siglo XII o XIII, [152] pero esto es bastante especulativo. Los cartularios de Aberdeen del siglo XIII prohibían a los clérigos llevar ropa "rayada", que podría haber hecho referencia al tartán. [153]
En 1333, los artistas góticos italianos Simone Martini y Lippo Memmi produjeron la Anunciación con Santa Margarita y San Ansano , una pintura sobre tabla de madera en témpera y pan de oro . Presenta al arcángel Gabriel con un manto con estampado de tartán , con reflejos claros donde se unen las rayas más oscuras, tal vez representando joyas, bordados o tejidos complementarios . Los historiadores del arte lo consideran un ejemplo de influencia textil "tártara" (mongol) ; probablemente no tenga relación con el tartán escocés. [u] La tela "tártara" venía en una gran variedad de patrones, muchos más complejos que el tartán (como el fino detalle en la túnica de Gabriel en la misma pintura); los patrones de este tipo fueron influyentes especialmente en el arte italiano en el siglo XIV.
Existen otras pinturas de Europa continental de prendas similares al tartán de esta época (incluso del siglo XIII), pero la mayoría de ellas muestran patrones de cuadros básicos muy simples de dos colores o (como el ejemplo de la Anunciación de Martini y Memmi ) cuadrados anchos hechos con líneas finas de un color sobre un fondo de otro. Cualquiera de ellas podría representar bordados o parches en lugar de tartán tejido. No parece haber ninguna indicación en los registros supervivientes de que se importara material de tartán de Escocia en este período. En la segunda mitad del siglo XIV, el artista conocido solo como el "Maestro de Estamariu " (en Cataluña, España) pintó un retablo de San Vicente, uno de cuyos detalles es un hombre con una cota de malla roja en una mitad y un complejo tartán de tres colores en la otra, que es muy similar a los tartanes escoceses atestiguados más tarde.
Sir Francis James Grant , rey de armas de Lord Lyon de mediados del siglo XX , señaló que los registros mostraban el uso de tartán en Escocia desde 1440. [154] Sin embargo, no está claro a qué registros se refería, y otros investigadores posteriores no han coincidido con esta fecha temprana.
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La muestra más antigua que se conserva de un tartán de lana teñida complejo (no solo un patrón de cuadros simple) en Escocia se ha demostrado mediante datación por radiocarbono que es del siglo XVI; se lo conoce como el "tartán de Glen Affric" y se descubrió a principios de la década de 1980 en una turbera cerca de Glen Affric en las Tierras Altas de Escocia; sus colores descoloridos incluyen verde, marrón, rojo y amarillo. El artefacto de 55 cm × 42 cm (22 in × 17 in) fue cedido por la Scottish Tartans Authority y se exhibió en el museo V&A Dundee en abril de 2023. [138] [155] [156] [157] [v]
La primera referencia escrita cierta al tartán por su nombre se encuentra en las cuentas de 1532-33 del Tesorero de Escocia: "Ane uthir tartane galcoit gevin to the king be the Maister Forbes" ('Otro abrigo de tartán dado al rey por el Maestro Forbes'), [5] seguido poco después por una contabilidad del Tesoro escocés de 1538 sobre la ropa que se encargaría para el rey Jacobo V de Escocia , que se refería a "heland tertane to be hoiss" ('tartán de las Tierras Altas para ser mangueras '). [158] [159] [w] Los cuadros aparecieron un poco antes; el poeta William Dunbar (c. 1459 - c. 1530) menciona "Cinco mil ellis ... de pladdis de las Tierras Altas". [160] La imagen más antigua que se conserva de un montañés con lo que probablemente se pretendía representar al tartán es una acuarela de 1567-1580 de Lucas de Heere , que muestra a un hombre con una túnica amarilla plisada con cinturón y un patrón de cuadros de líneas finas, una capa de color rojo claro y pantalones cortos azules ajustados (de un tipo que también se ve en el arte irlandés de la época), con una espada y un puñal . [161] Se parece mucho a las ilustraciones medievales de tela "tártara" y, por lo tanto, no se puede estar seguro de que represente un tartán auténtico. A finales del siglo XVI, hay numerosas referencias a cuadros o cuadros rayados. Supuestamente, el patrón más antiguo que todavía se produce hoy (aunque no en uso continuo) es el tartán del distrito de Lennox, [162] (también adoptado como el tartán del clan de Lennox ) [163] que se dice que fue reproducido por D. W. Stewart en 1893 a partir de un retrato de Margaret Douglas , condesa de Lennox, que data de alrededor de 1575. [164] Sin embargo, esto parece ser una leyenda, ya que ningún investigador de tartán moderno o historiador del arte ha identificado un retrato de este tipo, y el retrato realista más antiguo conocido de una mujer en tartán data de mucho después, alrededor de 1700. [165] Los retratos existentes de Margaret la muestran en terciopelo y brocado . [166]
Se ha dicho que el tartán y la vestimenta de las Highlands en la era isabelina se han vuelto esencialmente sin clases [x] - usados en las Highlands por todos, desde los terratenientes de alta cuna hasta los crofters comunes , [172] al menos a fines del siglo XVI. El historiador John Major escribió en 1521 que era la clase alta, incluidos los guerreros, quienes usaban cuadros, mientras que la gente común entre ellos usaba lino, sugiriendo que la tela de lana era algo así como un lujo. [173] Pero en 1578, el obispo John Lesley de Ross escribió que el tartán con cinturón era el traje general de las Highlands tanto de los ricos como de los pobres, y que la nobleza simplemente podía permitirse cuadros más grandes con más colores. [170] (Más tarde, Burt (1726) también escribió sobre caballeros que tenían cuadros más grandes que los plebeyos). [20] Si los colores transmitían distinción, era de clase social, no de clan. [174] DW Stewart (1893) atribuyó el cambio, que dejó de producir lino, a una mayor producción de tejidos de lana y a "la creciente prosperidad de la gente". [170]
Muchos escritores de la época trazaron paralelismos entre la vestimenta irlandesa y la de las Tierras Altas, especialmente el uso de una camisa larga teñida de amarillo llamada léine o camisa azafrán (aunque probablemente no estaba teñida con azafrán importado y caro ), [175] que se usaba con un manto (capa) encima y, a veces, con pantalones de tartán . [176] No se sabe con certeza cuándo se hicieron por primera vez estos mantos de tartán en las Tierras Altas, pero parece que la tela distintiva tiene sus primeras menciones registradas en el siglo XVI, a partir de Major (1521). En 1556, Jean de Beaugué , un testigo francés de las tropas escocesas en el continente en el asedio de Haddington de 1548 , distinguió a los habitantes de las Tierras Bajas de los "salvajes" de las Tierras Altas, y escribió sobre estos últimos como personas que usaban camisas "y una cierta cubierta ligera hecha de lana de varios colores". [177] [178] George Buchanan escribió en 1582 que los "cuadros de muchos colores" tenían una larga tradición pero que la moda de las Tierras Altas en su época había cambiado en su mayoría hacia un aspecto más sencillo, especialmente tonos marrones, como una cuestión práctica de camuflaje. [179] [y] Fynes Moryson escribió en 1598 (publicado en 1617) sobre las mujeres comunes de las Tierras Altas que usaban " plodan ", "una tela gruesa, de dos o tres colores en labor de cuadros". [182]
Su denso tejido requería habilidades y equipo especializados, el tartán no era generalmente el trabajo de una sola persona sino algo así como una industria casera temprana en las Tierras Altas -una actividad a menudo comunitaria llamada calanas , incluyendo algunas tradiciones de canto popular asociadas- con varias especialidades ocupacionales relacionadas (peinador de lana, tintorero, waulker , urdimbre -bobinador, tejedor) entre las personas en un pueblo, a tiempo parcial o completo, [184] especialmente mujeres. [185] [aa] La rueca fue una llegada tecnológica tardía a las Tierras Altas, y el tartán en esta era se tejía a partir de hilo fino (pero bastante inconsistente) hilado duro que se hilaba a mano en husos colgantes . [7] El comercio de tartanes de la época se centró en Inverness , cuyos primeros registros comerciales están llenos de muchas referencias a productos de tartán. [188] Los patrones de tartán se asociaban vagamente con los tejedores de áreas particulares, debido en parte a las diferencias en la disponibilidad de tintes naturales, [95] [189] [93] [190] y era común que los habitantes de las Tierras Altas usaran lo que estuviera disponible para ellos, [1] a menudo varios tartanes diferentes al mismo tiempo. [191] [ab] Los primeros tartanes encontrados en la costa este de Escocia usaban el rojo con más frecuencia, probablemente debido al comercio continental-europeo más fácil del tinte rojo cochinilla , mientras que los tartanes occidentales eran más a menudo en azules y verdes, debido a los tintes disponibles localmente. [164] El mayor gasto del tinte rojo también puede haberlo convertido en un símbolo de estatus . [193] El tartán se extendió al menos un poco fuera de las Tierras Altas, pero no fue universalmente bien recibido. La Asamblea General de la Iglesia de Escocia en 1575 prohibió a los ministros y lectores de la iglesia (y a sus esposas) usar cuadros escoceses y otras prendas " suntuosas ", [194] [195] mientras que el consejo de Aberdeen, "un distrito de ninguna manera de las Tierras Altas", en 1576 prohibió el uso de cuadros escoceses (probablemente refiriéndose a cuadros escoceses con cinturón). [196]
Un relato irlandés de 1594 de Lughaidh Ó Cléirigh sobre los mercenarios escoceses de gallowglass en Irlanda describe claramente el tartán con cinturón, "una prenda moteada con numerosos colores que cuelga en pliegues hasta la pantorrilla de la pierna, con una faja alrededor de los lomos sobre la prenda". [197] Las primeras " plantaciones " (colonias) organizadas de forma privada y, posteriormente, la Plantación del Ulster, de carácter gubernamental , trajeron el tejido de tartán a Irlanda del Norte a finales del siglo XVI y principios del XVII. [198] Muchos de los nuevos colonos eran escoceses y se unieron a la población ya bien establecida allí por siglos de inmigrantes de gallowglass y otros. En 1956, la pieza más antigua que sobrevivió de tela de tartán irlandés fue descubierta en una marga pantanosa a las afueras de Dungiven en Irlanda del Norte , en forma de pantalones de tartán , junto con otras prendas de vestir que no eran de tartán. [199] Se le denominó "tartán de Dungiven" o "tartán del Ulster". [200] La muestra se fechó mediante palinología en torno a 1590-1650 [201] [202] (el suelo que rodeaba la tela estaba saturado de polen de pino silvestre , una especie importada al Ulster desde Escocia por los plantadores). [203] [19] Según la experta arqueológica en textiles Audrey Henshall , la tela probablemente se tejió en el condado de Donegal , Irlanda, pero los tartán se confeccionaron en las Tierras Altas de Escocia [203] [204] a un precio elevado, lo que sugiere que se trataba de alguien de rango, [205] posiblemente un gallowglass. [201] Henshall reprodujo el tartán para una exposición en 1958; [203] [19] se hizo popular (y se promocionó mucho) como un tartán de distrito para el Ulster [19] (tanto en una forma descolorida, como se encontró, [206] como en una paleta brillante que intentó reproducir su apariencia original), [207] y parece haber inspirado la creación posterior de más tartanes de distrito irlandeses. [19] [208] . No hay casi nada en el material de fuentes de la época que sugiera que los irlandeses también usaran habitualmente tartán; una de las únicas fuentes que posiblemente se puedan interpretar en apoyo de la idea es William Camden , quien escribió en su Britannia (al menos desde la edición de 1607) que "los habitantes de las Tierras Altas... usan, según la moda irlandesa, mantos a rayas". [209] [210] [ac]
La imagen inequívoca más antigua que se conserva de los habitantes de las Tierras Altas en una aproximación al tartán es una acuarela, que data de c. 1603-1616 y redescubierta a fines del siglo XX por Hieronymus Tielsch o Tielssch. Muestra un tartán con cinturón de hombre y un tartán de mujer (arisaid, earasaid ) usados como chal o capa sobre un vestido, y también representa medias cortas cortadas en cubitos y un gorro azul . [183] [211] [z] Los clanes habían formado milicias de forma independiente durante mucho tiempo y, a partir de 1603, el propio gobierno británico reunió unidades de milicia irregulares en las Tierras Altas, conocidas como Compañías Independientes de las Tierras Altas (IHC). [212] Como eran de las Tierras Altas, probablemente llevaban tartán (los mercenarios de las Tierras Altas de 1631 ciertamente lo hacían, y los ICH llevaban tartán en 1709 [212] y uniformes reales de tartán en 1725). [213] [214] [215] El tartán se usaba como tejido de decoración , incluidas las colgaduras de las camas en el castillo de Ardstinchar en 1605. [216] Después de mencionar los "mantos rayados" de los montañeses en la Britannia de Camden de 1607, [209] el poeta John Taylor escribió en 1618 en The Pennyless Pilgrimage sobre el atuendo "tartán" de las Tierras Altas en detalle (en términos que generalmente coinciden con lo que se describió e ilustró incluso dos siglos después); señaló que no solo lo usaban los lugareños sino también los caballeros británicos que lo visitaban. [ad] [ae] El consejo de Aberdeen volvió a tomar medidas enérgicas contra los cuadros escoceses en 1621, esta vez contra su uso como tocado de las mujeres, [196] y la iglesia de Glasgow había prohibido previamente, en 1604, su uso durante los servicios; [218] aparecieron resoluciones similares de sesiones de la iglesia en Elgin en 1624, en Kinghorn en 1642 y 1644, y Monifieth en 1643, con los cuadros escoceses de las mujeres censurados de manera más literaria en Edimburgo en 1633 por William Lithgow . [219] En 1622, los Tribunales de Barones de Breadalbane establecieron precios fijos para diferentes complejidades de tartán y tela lisa. [220]
En 1627, un cuerpo de arqueros de las Tierras Altas vestidos de tartán sirvió bajo el conde de Morton . [221] Se crearon más compañías independientes en 1667. [212] La primera imagen de soldados escoceses en tartán es un grabado en cobre de 1631 de Georg Köler (1600-1638); presenta mercenarios de las Tierras Altas de la Guerra de los Treinta Años en las fuerzas de Gustavo Adolfo de Suecia. [222] [223] No mucho después, James Gordon, párroco de Rothiemay , escribió en A History of Scots Affairs from 1637 to 1641 sobre el tartán con cinturón como "una capa suelta de varias anas , rayada y de colores partidos, que se ciñen a lo ancho con un cinturón de cuero..." También describió las medias cortas y los pantalones ("trowzes"). [224] Un mapa de 1653, Scotia Antiqua de Joan Blaeu , presenta un cartucho que representa a hombres con pantalones y cuadros escoceses con cinturón; el tartán está representado de forma tosca como líneas finas sobre un fondo liso, [225] y varias copias existentes están coloreadas a mano de forma diferente. Daniel Defoe , en Memorias de un caballero (c. 1720) escribió, utilizando materiales que probablemente datan de la Guerra Civil Inglesa , sobre los montañeses que invadieron el norte de Inglaterra en 1639 que habían llevado "jubón, pantalones y medias, de un material que llamaban cuadros, con rayas rojas y amarillas, con capas cortas del mismo material". [226]
Aparte del uso de mantas para la cabeza en la iglesia, que antes se criticaba con frecuencia, no se describía a menudo la vestimenta de las mujeres (excepto en épocas anteriores en las que se decía que eran similares a las de los hombres). [af] El equivalente de la manta con cinturón para las mujeres de las Tierras Altas y de las islas era el arisaid ( earasaid ), una manta que se podía usar como un gran chal o envolver en un vestido. Sir William Brereton había escrito en 1634-35 (publicado en 1844) sobre las mujeres de las Tierras Bajas en Edimburgo que: "Muchas usan mantas (especialmente de la clase más baja) ... que se echan [ sic ] sobre sus cabezas y les cubren la cara por ambos lados, y llegarían casi al suelo, pero que las recogen y las llevan echadas bajo los brazos". También informó que las mujeres allí usaban "seis o siete hábitos y modas diferentes, algunos para distinción de viudas, esposas y doncellas", incluidos vestidos, capas/mantos, gorros con velos de bongrace y volantes de cuello, aunque no abordó los patrones escoceses en particular en dichas prendas. [228]
Aunque el tartán todavía se fabricaba en las Tierras Altas como industria casera, en 1655 la producción se había centrado en Aberdeen , donde se fabricaba "en mayor abundancia que en cualquier otro lugar de la nación", [21] aunque también se fabricaba en Glasgow , Montrose y Dundee , gran parte para la exportación. [21] Al menos en Glasgow, parte del comercio se basaba en tartán fabricado en las Tierras Altas y las Hébridas y llevado allí para su venta junto con pieles y otros productos. [21] Impresionado por el comercio en Glasgow, Richard Franck escribió en sus Memorias del Norte de 1658 que la tela era "el producto básico de este país". [229] En 1662, el naturalista John Ray escribió sobre la "manta de color de fiesta que [los escoceses] llaman plad, sobre sus cabezas y hombros", y comentó que un escocés incluso de la clase baja estaba "vestido como un caballero" porque la costumbre en esta época era gastar extraordinariamente en ropa, [230] una costumbre que parece haberse remontado a finales del siglo XVI. [231] Un Thomas Kirk de Yorkshire comentó sobre los pantalones a cuadros, los cuadros escoceses y posiblemente los kilts de "color cuadros" en 1677; [232] más material de Kirk fue impreso en los Early Travellers in Scotland de 1891 editado por Peter Hume Brown , registrando "ropa de plad" en forma de cuadros escoceses con cinturón, pantalones a cuadros y medias. [233] Un poema de William Cleland en 1678 tenía oficiales escoceses con pantalones a cuadros y cuadros en los hombros, y soldados con cuadros escoceses con cinturón. [234] En 1689, Thomas Morer, un clérigo inglés de regimientos escoceses, describió que las mujeres de las Tierras Bajas frecuentemente usaban cuadros a pesar de que por lo demás se vestían mayoritariamente como las inglesas. [235]
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El retrato realista más antiguo conocido de un traje escocés de las Highlands es una pieza (que existe en tres versiones) de John Michael Wright , que muestra un tartán muy complicado de marrón, negro y dos tonos de rojo; [236] está fechado en c. 1683 y es de Mungo Murray, hijo de John Murray, marqués de Atholl . [237] [ag]
En 1688, William Sacheverell, teniente gobernador de la Isla de Man , escribió sobre los cuadros escoceses de las mujeres de Mull en las Hébridas Interiores como "mucho más finos, los colores más vivos y los cuadrados más grandes que los de los hombres... Esto les sirve de velo y cubre tanto la cabeza como el cuerpo". [239] En el poema de 1691 The Grameid , [240] James Philip de Almerieclose describió la Batalla de Killiecrankie de 1689 en términos que parecen sugerir que algunas milicias de clanes tenían libreas escocesas uniformes , y algunos historiadores lo han interpretado así. [241] [242]
No fue hasta principios del siglo XVIII que se informó que se produjo una uniformidad regional en el tartán, suficiente para identificar el área de origen. [149] Martin Martin , en A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland , publicado en 1703, escribió, después de describir los tartanes y los cuadros escoceses con cinturón "de diversos colores... agradables a la más fina fantasía", que los tartanes podían usarse para distinguir a los habitantes de diferentes lugares. [ah] Martin no mencionó nada parecido al uso de un patrón especial por parte de cada familia.
En 1709, las Compañías Independientes de las Tierras Altas llevaban la vestimenta cotidiana de las Tierras Altas, no uniformes de un tartán en particular, para mimetizarse mejor con los civiles y detectar la traición jacobita . [212] En 1713, la Compañía Real de Arqueros (una unidad de guardaespaldas real formada por primera vez en 1676), [245] se convirtió en la primera unidad al servicio de la corona británica que adoptó un tartán en particular como parte de su uniforme formal. Los milicianos del Clan Grant pueden haber estado todos en tartán verde y rojo (detalles no especificados) ya en 1703-04 [246] [164] y usar una librea de tartán de uniforme en 1715. [247] No es un patrón sobreviviente, y los tartanes Grant modernos son de una fecha mucho más posterior. [248]
Un relato de los hombres de las Tierras Altas en 1711 decía que todos ellos, incluidos "los de la mejor clase", usaban el tartán con cinturón. [249] Un relato de 1723 sugería que los caballeros, al menos cuando se mezclaban con los ingleses, eran más propensos a usar pantalones y medias de tartán con sus asistentes en el tartán con cinturón, [249] lo que Burt también observó; [250] los pantalones también eran más prácticos para montar a caballo. [251] También alrededor de 1723, las chaquetas de tartán cortas, llamadas en gaélico còta-goirid , a veces con mangas cortadas y usadas con un chaleco a juego, hicieron su primera aparición y comenzaron a suplantar, en el vestido de las Tierras Altas, los jubones de color liso que eran comunes en todo el vestido europeo de la época; el còta-goirid a menudo se usaba con pantalones a juego y un tartán de hombro que podía o no combinar, pero también podía usarse con un tartán con cinturón. [252] [ai]
M. Martin (1703) escribió que las mujeres "vulgares" de las Hébridas todavía usaban el vestido arisado , [253] describiéndolo como "un plaid blanco, con algunas rayas pequeñas de negro, azul y rojo; llegaba desde el cuello hasta los talones, y estaba atado por delante en el pecho con una hebilla de plata o latón", algunas muy ornamentadas. Dijo que también usaban un cinturón decorado, mangas escarlatas y pañuelos de lino para la cabeza. [254] Martin no fue la única fuente de la época que sugirió que era principalmente la vestimenta de las mujeres comunes, y que las damas de las Tierras Altas de clase alta en el siglo XVIII probablemente usaban vestidos a medida, vestidos y trajes de montar , a menudo de material importado, como lo hacían las mujeres de las Tierras Bajas e inglesas. [165] [255] El vestido de las mujeres de las Tierras Altas también era a veces simplemente en rayas lineales en lugar de tartán, una tela llamada iomairt ( drugget ). [165] Desde finales del siglo XVIII, a medida que el arisaid fue relegado cada vez más a un segundo plano para la indumentaria femenina contemporánea, mientras que los hombres de las Tierras Altas siguieron usando el tartán con cinturón, [256] los tartán de las mujeres se redujeron a "pantallas" más pequeñas: chales con flecos utilizados como tocados y accesorios de vestir, [255] "una gentrificación del arisaid". [165] (Wilsons continuó produciéndolos en la primera mitad del siglo XIX). [165] John Macky en A Journey Through Scotland (1723) escribió sobre mujeres escocesas que usaban, cuando estaban cerca, tales tartán sobre sus cabezas y cuerpos, sobre vestidos de estilo inglés, y comparó la práctica con las mujeres continentales que usaban abrigos negros para la iglesia, el mercado y otras funciones. [235] Edmund Burt , un inglés que pasó años en Inverness y sus alrededores, escribió en 1727-1737 (publicado en 1754) que las mujeres de allí también llevaban cuadros escoceses, hechos de lana fina o incluso de seda , que a veces se usaban para cubrirse la cabeza y que se llevaban largos, hasta el tobillo, de un lado. Añadió que en Edimburgo (muy al sureste) también se usaban, y las damas indicaban su postura política Whig o Tory según el lado en el que los llevaban largos (aunque no recordaba cuál era cuál). [257] En Edimburgo, la desaprobación perenne del "hábito bárbaro" de las mujeres que llevaban cuadros escoceses sobre la cabeza volvió en los escritos de 1753 de William Maitland . Las mujeres aparecen por primera vez en retratos pintados conocidos con cuadros escoceses hacia 1700, con el de Rachel Gordon de Abergeldie .; ejemplos más tempranos se encuentran en pinturas de 1742 y 1749 de William Mosman. Muestran cuadros escoceses (en tartanes que no sobreviven como patrones modernos) usados sueltos alrededor de los hombros por modelos con vestidos típicos de moda europea. [258] Algunos vestidos enteros de tartán aparecen en retratos de mediados del siglo XVIII, pero son poco comunes. [165] En el período jacobita, el tartán a veces también se usaba como adorno, por ejemplo en sombreros. Los cuadros también se usaban como parte de los trajes de boda. Los adinerados a veces tenían vestidos de boda enteros de tartán, algunos de seda, e incluso ideaban tartanes personalizados para bodas, generalmente basados en patrones existentes con colores cambiados. [255]
Los retratos se hicieron más populares entre la élite de las Tierras Altas a partir de principios del siglo XVIII. [260] Una tela similar a la del retrato de Mungo Murray de c. 1683 aparece en el retrato de 1708 del joven John Campbell de Glenorchy , atribuido a Charles Jervas ; y el retrato de c. 1712 de Kenneth Sutherland, Lord Duffus , de Richard Waitt . [261] Este estilo de tartán muy "cargado" pero dominado por el marrón parece haber sido bastante común hasta principios del siglo XVIII, y es bastante diferente de los patrones posteriores. [262] A medida que avanzaba el siglo, los tartán más atrevidos llegaron a dominar, a juzgar por los retratos posteriores y las muestras de tela y ropa supervivientes. A principios del siglo XVIII, la fabricación de tartán (y el tejido en general) se centraron en Bannockburn , Stirling; aquí es donde se estableció el tejedor de tartán eventualmente dominante William Wilson and Son, fundado c. 1765. [263] [ak]
A juzgar por las raras muestras supervivientes, los colores predominantes del tartán civil de este periodo, además del blanco (lana sin teñir) y el negro, eran rojos y verdes intensos y azules bastante oscuros, no uniformes de una zona a otra; donde había un buen negro disponible, se utilizaba menos el azul oscuro. [7] El patrón típico de las Tierras Altas de la época, como se muestra en los retratos, era rojo con amplias bandas de verde y/o azul, a veces con finos cuadros superpuestos. [7] [al] Los retratos al óleo eran el territorio de los privilegiados, y los tartanes de " mejor domingo " con fondos rojos se usaban comúnmente en ellos como símbolo de estatus , desde principios del siglo XVIII, y el tinte se hacía normalmente a partir de cochinilla importada y cara . [165] [265] El verde y el azul predominaron en general debido a su relativa facilidad de producción con tintes disponibles localmente, mientras que los tintes amarillos [am] y rojos, más difíciles de conseguir, se reservaban comúnmente para líneas de cuadros finos [267] (una práctica que continuó, por ejemplo, en los tartanes militares y, en consecuencia, en muchos tartanes de clan, hasta el siglo XIX ). Sin embargo, incluso los azules con tintes locales a menudo se teñían con cierta cantidad de índigo importado para obtener un color más intenso. [49]
El Tratado y las Actas de Unión de 1706-07, que eliminaron el Parlamento separado de Escocia , llevaron a los habitantes de las Tierras Bajas de Escocia a adoptar el tartán en grandes cantidades por primera vez, como símbolo de protesta contra la unión. [268] [269] No solo lo usaban los hombres (independientemente de la clase social), [270] sino incluso las influyentes damas de Edimburgo, [268] [271] hasta bien entrada la década de 1790. [272] A principios del siglo XVIII, también había cierta demanda de tartán en Inglaterra, para ser utilizado en cortinas, ropa de cama, camisones, etc., y los tejedores de Norwich , Norfolk y algunas otras ciudades inglesas intentaban duplicar el producto escocés, pero se consideraban la opción de menor calidad. [249]
Los combatientes más eficaces del jacobitismo fueron los clanes escoceses que lo apoyaban, lo que llevó a una asociación del tartán y el vestido de las Tierras Altas con la causa jacobita para restaurar la dinastía católica Estuardo en el trono de Inglaterra, Escocia e Irlanda. Esto incluía grandes kilts y trews (pantalones) con grandes abrigos, todos típicamente de tela escocesa, así como el gorro azul . El parlamento británico había considerado prohibir el tartán con cinturón después del levantamiento jacobita de 1715 , pero no lo hizo. [273] El atuendo de las Tierras Altas llegó a formar una especie de uniforme jacobita, [272] [274] incluso usado por el propio príncipe Carlos Eduardo Estuardo ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") a mediados del siglo XVIII, [275] [an] principalmente en retratos de propaganda (con tartanes inconsistentes) pero también por relatos de testigos presenciales en Culloden . [281] En este período, a veces se usaba un tartán con cinturón sobre los trews y la chaqueta de tartán (en patrones que no necesitaban coincidir). [282]
Burt había coincidido c. 1728, al igual que su editor de 1818 Robert Jamieson , con la observación mucho anterior de Buchanan de 1582 de que los tartanes a menudo tenían colores destinados a mezclarse con el brezo y otros entornos naturales. [283] Sin embargo, esto puede representar simplemente prejuicios de los escritores ingleses de la época, al menos a mediados del siglo XVIII. Las muestras existentes de tela de la era de Culloden a veces son bastante coloridas. Un ejemplo es un patrón encontrado en un abrigo (probablemente jacobita) que se sabe que data de alrededor del levantamiento de 1745; si bien se ha desvanecido a tonos oliva y azul marino, el conjunto es uno audaz de verde, azul, negro, rojo, amarillo, blanco y azul claro (en proporciones decrecientes). Si bien una aproximación del patrón se publicó por primera vez en D. W. Stewart (1893), los colores y las proporciones eran incorrectos; El abrigo original fue redescubierto y reexaminado en 2007. [284] [285] Otra muestra sobreviviente de Culloden, predominantemente roja con amplias bandas de azul, verde y negro, y algunas líneas finas de cuadros, consiste en un cuadro entero en gran parte intacto que perteneció a un tal John Moir; fue donado al Museo Nacional de Escocia en 2019. [286]
Existe una leyenda que dice que los jacobitas usaban un tartán particular que todavía existe como identificador incluso antes del " 15 ". Esta historia se puede rastrear hasta W. & A. Smith (1850) en Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland , en el que afirmaban que un patrón que publicaron fue recibido de una mujer anónima que aún vivía y que a su vez afirmaba una tradición familiar de que el tartán databa de 1712, mucho antes de su nacimiento, pero de la que no hay evidencia. [32] Este cuento de oídas fue repetido más tarde como si fuera un hecho conocido por otros libros, por ejemplo, What Is My Tartan? de Adam Frank en 1896, [287] y la revisión de Margaret MacDougall de 1974 de Clans and Tartans of Scotland de Robert Bain de 1938. [ao] Incluso el a menudo crédulo Innes de Learney (1938) no lo creyó. [ 290] El patrón en cuestión data al menos de c. 1815–26, porque fue recopilado por la Highland Society de Londres durante ese período. [32] Pero no hay evidencia fundamentada de que los jacobitas usaran un tartán consistente, y mucho menos uno que haya sobrevivido hasta el presente.
Las Compañías Independientes de las Tierras Altas fueron creadas nuevamente a partir de clanes escoceses leales a la monarquía hannoveriana durante 1725-29. [291] [ap] [292] Esta vez llevaban tartanes uniformes de azul, negro y verde, presumiblemente con líneas de cuadros diferenciadas. [293] [292] [213] Todas se normalizaron a un tartán durante 1725-33 [213] [215] [214] [294] (un patrón que probablemente no sobrevive hasta nuestros días). [164] El tartán uniforme parece haber cambiado a un nuevo tartán, conocido hoy como Black Watch o Government, cuando las compañías se fusionaron para convertirse en el 42º regimiento (Black Watch) en 1739.
Tras el fracaso del levantamiento jacobita de 1745 , los esfuerzos por pacificar las Tierras Altas y debilitar el poder cultural y político de los clanes [295] [296] condujeron a la Ley de Vestimenta de 1746 , parte de la Ley de Proscripción para desarmar a los habitantes de las Tierras Altas. Debido a que la vestimenta escocesa de las Tierras Altas estaba tan fuertemente vinculada simbólicamente a la causa militante jacobita, [297] la ley -un retroceso altamente político a las leyes suntuarias abandonadas desde hacía mucho tiempo [297] - prohibió el uso de la vestimenta de las Tierras Altas por parte de hombres y niños en Escocia al norte del río Forth (es decir, en las Tierras Altas), [aq] excepto para la nobleza terrateniente [ar] y los regimientos de las Tierras Altas del Ejército británico. [299] La ley se basó en las prohibiciones del siglo XVI contra el uso de la vestimenta tradicional irlandesa en el Reino de Irlanda por parte de la administración del Castillo de Dublín . [300] Sir Walter Scott escribió sobre la Ley de Vestimenta: "La prohibición tenía un profundo sentido de humanidad, ya que despojaba a los habitantes de las Tierras Altas de una vestimenta que estaba estrechamente asociada con sus hábitos de clan y de guerra". [301]
Los tartanes registrados poco después de la ley (por lo que probablemente sean patrones en uso en el período anterior a la proscripción) muestran que se utilizó un patrón general en un área amplia, con cambios menores realizados por tejedores individuales a gusto. [222] Por ejemplo, el tartán utilizado hoy como el tartán principal (rojo) del clan Mackintosh , [302] registrado por la Highland Society de Londres alrededor de 1815, se encontró en variantes de Perthshire y Badenoch a lo largo de Great Glen hasta Loch Moy . [222] Se pueden encontrar otros grupos similares, por ejemplo, un grupo Murray / Sutherland / Gordon centrado en Huntly analizado como claramente relacionado por Innes de Learney (1938) [152] - que se distingue de un grupo Huntly / MacRae / Ross / Grant diferente identificado por Scottish Register of Tartans y el investigador de tartán Peter Eslea MacDonald de Scottish Tartans Authority . [303] [304] Pero Scarlett (1990) dice que "los patrones antiguos disponibles son demasiado pocos en número para permitir un estudio detallado de tales distribuciones de patrones" en las Tierras Altas. [222] Los retratos de la época también muestran que el tartán se hacía cada vez más con patrones de urdimbre y trama idénticos o casi idénticos , lo que no siempre había sido el caso antes, y que la tela de tartán utilizada era de sarga fina, con un grosor uniforme de urdimbre y trama, que todavía se usa hoy en día para los kilts. [242] [260]
Aunque la Ley de Vestimenta, contrariamente a la creencia popular posterior, no prohibió todo el tartán [305] (ni las gaitas, ni el gaélico), y las mujeres, los nobles y los soldados siguieron vistiendo tartán, [306] no obstante cortó de manera efectiva la tradición cotidiana de los habitantes de las Tierras Altas de vestir principalmente tartán, ya que impuso el uso de ropa no típica de las Tierras Altas, común en el resto de Europa, durante dos generaciones. [299] [307] (Si bien algunos habitantes de las Tierras Altas desafiaron la ley, [308] [309] hubo duras sanciones penales). [310] Tuvo un efecto desmoralizador, [ya que] el objetivo de esta y otras medidas relacionadas para integrar a los habitantes de las Tierras Bajas en la sociedad británica más amplia [300] fue en gran medida exitoso. [297] [312] En la década de 1770, la vestimenta de las Tierras Altas parecía casi extinta. [313] Sin embargo, la ley también puede haber ayudado irónicamente a "galvanizar la conciencia de clan" bajo esa supresión; [314] Los clanes escoceses, en una forma romantizada, regresarían con fuerza en la era de los "tartanes de clan" desde la Regencia (finales del período georgiano ) hasta el período victoriano .
Mientras tanto, las mujeres jacobitas siguieron usando el tartán profusamente, para la ropa (desde vestidos hasta zapatos), cortinas y artículos de uso diario. [316] [306] Si bien los retratos de los nobles de los clanes del siglo XVIII, infundidos con el clasicismo (a menudo pintados fuera de Escocia), generalmente los mostraban con tartán y vestidos de las "Tierras Altas", gran parte de ellos eran estilos militares de regimiento lealistas, la antítesis del mensaje jacobita; [317] presagiaba un cambio importante en la política del tartán . Sin embargo, esta profusa aplicación del tartán podría verse como rebelde hasta cierto punto, con el Highlander cosificado convirtiéndose en "una figura heroica y clásica, el legado de virtudes primitivas". [318] Y en la década de 1760, el tartán se había asociado cada vez más con Escocia en general, no solo con las Tierras Altas, especialmente en la mente inglesa. [319]
Después de muchas protestas (ya que la prohibición se aplicaba tanto a jacobitas como a leales), la Ley de Vestimenta fue derogada en 1782, principalmente por los esfuerzos de la Highland Society de Londres; [321] el proyecto de ley de derogación fue presentado por James Graham, marqués de Graham (más tarde duque de Montrose). [322] Algunos habitantes de las Tierras Altas retomaron su vestimenta tradicional, [323] pero en general había sido abandonada por sus antiguos portadores campesinos, adoptada en su lugar por las clases altas y medias, como una moda. [324] El tartán había sido "culturalmente reubicado como un conjunto pintoresco o como la vestimenta de una fuerza de combate resistente y eficaz" para la corona, no como un símbolo de rebelión directa. [325] R. Martin (1988) llama a esta transmutación "la gran bifurcación en la vestimenta de tartán", [326] la tela fue abandonada en gran medida (a la fuerza) por los provincianos originales de las Tierras Altas y luego adoptada por los militares y, en consecuencia, por civiles no montañeses. Durante la prohibición, las técnicas tradicionales de las Tierras Altas de hilado y teñido de lana, y el tejido de tartán, habían declinado marcadamente. [95] [298] [104] La producción comercial de tartán se volvería a centrar en las Tierras Bajas, en pueblos industriales a lo largo de la periferia de las Tierras Altas, [327] entre compañías como Wilsons de Bannockburn (entonces el fabricante dominante), [328] con el aumento de la demanda de tartán para vestimenta de regimiento militar . [329] Algunos tejidos de tartán continuaron en las Tierras Altas, [330] [331] e incluso verían un impulso en el período georgiano tardío. [330] En esta época, el tartán también se había vuelto popular en áreas de las Tierras Bajas, incluyendo Fife y Lothian y los centros urbanos de Edimburgo y Stirling . [305] De 1797 a 1830, [263] Wilsons exportó grandes cantidades de tartán (tanto para ropa de hombres como de mujeres), primero a las colonias británicas en Granada y Jamaica (donde el material asequible, duradero y brillante era popular para vestir a las personas esclavizadas ), [327] y tenía clientes en Inglaterra, Europa del Norte y Central, y un poco más tarde en América del Norte y del Sur y el Mediterráneo. [332] [333] Sin embargo, a fines del siglo XVIII, Wilsons tenía una "dura competencia" (en tartán civil) de los tejedores ingleses en Norwich . [334]
Como la Ley de Vestimenta no se había aplicado a los militares ni a la nobleza, el tartán se había asociado gradualmente con los ricos, en lugar de los " nobles salvajes " de las Tierras Altas, [335] [336] [337] desde finales del siglo XVIII y hasta el XIX, [338] junto con los estilos de ropa patrióticos de influencia militar en general; [339] el tartán y la vestimenta militarizada de las Tierras Altas estaban reviviendo entre los amantes de la moda en toda Gran Bretaña, incluso entre las mujeres con familiares militares. [340] Los clanes, el jacobitismo y el antisindicalismo (ninguno de ellos ya una amenaza real de disturbios civiles) eran vistos cada vez más con un sentido de nostalgia, [172] [341] [342] [337] especialmente después de la muerte del Príncipe Carlos Eduardo Estuardo en 1788, [343] incluso cuando los regimientos de las Tierras Altas demostraron su lealtad y valor. [337] La adopción de aires de una especie de " Highlandism " escocés de tipo Tory [344] proporcionó un sentido posunión y resignado de distinción nacional (y de élite militar) del resto de Gran Bretaña, sin amenazar al imperio . [345] Incluso el futuro Jorge IV se puso la indumentaria de las Tierras Altas para un baile de máscaras en 1789. [346] En la década de 1790, algunos miembros de la nobleza ayudaban a diseñar tartanes para su propio uso personal, según los registros supervivientes de Wilsons. [172] Se decía que Jane (Maxwell) Gordon, duquesa de Gordon , había "introducido el tartán en la corte [real] ... vistiendo un tartán de la Black Watch, a la que su hijo acababa de ser nombrado", en 1792; desencadenó una moda de llevar tartán en Londres y París, aunque no fue inmune a la caricatura de los desaprobadores. [347]
R. Martin (1988) escribió, desde una perspectiva historiográfica , que después de la Ley de Vestimenta: [326]
La idea del vestido de las Highlands se almacenó en el desván histórico colectivo; cuando se resucitó en los años previos a 1822, había sido olvidada por unas dos o tres generaciones en el vestir civil y podía recordarse, aunque engañosa e ingenuamente, como el antiguo vestido de las Highlands, no el que se usaba tan recientemente como el vestido campesino estándar antes de 1746. La prohibición del tartán tuvo un gran éxito, pero fue tan contraria a un proceso histórico natural, que promovió la reafirmación violenta del tartán, sancionada por un espurio sentido de la historia, en el siglo siguiente.
Los tumultuosos acontecimientos del siglo XVIII en Escocia llevaron no solo a un uso público más amplio de la tela escocesa, sino también a dos categorías de tartán particulares y perdurables: los tartanes de regimiento y, finalmente, los tartanes de clan.
Después del período de las primeras milicias de clanes y las Compañías Independientes de las Tierras Altas (IHC), entre 1739 y el final de las Guerras Napoleónicas en 1815, se formaron más de 100 batallones de regimientos de línea, de guerrilleros, de milicia y de voluntarios, en o predominantemente en las Tierras Altas, [348] una proporción sustancial de ellos con la indumentaria típica de las Tierras Altas. De estas unidades, solo algunas tenían tartanes uniformes distintivos y, de ellas, solo se ha registrado un pequeño número hasta el día de hoy.
Los IHC se fusionaron en 1739 para convertirse en el 43.º (más tarde 42.º) Regimiento de Infantería , [349] llamado Black Watch. [350] Fue el primer regimiento gubernamental adecuado de las Highlands , parte del ejército británico , y usaban el tartán con cinturón ("gran kilt") para el uniforme de gala y el pequeño kilt a medida para el uniforme de desvestirse. [351] [292] [352] Para la primera prenda, [353] usaban un tartán distintivo, que fue diseñado para la unidad. [354] Originalmente se llamaba "tartán 42", [354] por lo que probablemente no se adoptó hasta después de que la unidad fuera renumerada como 42.ª en 1749. [213] Parece probable que el tartán se basara en los utilizados por los IHC anteriormente, pero con cuadros negros dobles "tram line" añadidos. [213] [355] El patrón Black Watch fue utilizado por varios otros regimientos, y se ha estimado que para vestirlos a todos, se tuvieron que tejer unas 30-40 millas (48-64 km) del tartán antes de 1750 solamente. [59] Se convirtió en la base de varios tartanes de regimiento (y eventualmente de clan) posteriores. [213] Sigue siendo popular en el uso público general bajo los nombres "Black Watch", "Government" y cualquiera de "old Campbell ", "hunting Grant " o "hunting Munro ", [213] pero hoy oficialmente llamado "Government No. 1" por los militares. El 42º tuvo tratantes separados para su pequeño kilt hasta c. 1814 [353] [356] (también utilizado para los cuadros con cinturón de los granaderos ), [353] para los gaiteros , [357] [358] y para los tamborileros. [359]
Después de los levantamientos jacobitas , para muchos lairds escoceses formar un regimiento al servicio del rey era una forma de rehabilitar el nombre de la familia, asegurar una nueva lealtad a la corona hannoveriana y ganarse el favor real (incluso recuperando propiedades confiscadas). [360] Exentos de la Ley de vestimenta , a los hombres de estos regimientos de las Tierras Altas del imperio se les daba la vestimenta de las Tierras Altas, y los "kilts y las pipas que una vez se consideraron bárbaros ahora se veían como nacionalismo 'seguro'" dentro del ejército. [361] Desde aproximadamente 1770 en adelante hasta el siglo XIX, prácticamente todo el tartán del regimiento fue producido por la empresa William Wilson & Son de Bannockburn , el tejedor de tartán dominante. [328] Los uniformes del regimiento, incluidos los tartanes, se dejaron, generalmente dentro del esquema de colores general basado en Black Watch de negro, azul y verde, a sus comandantes. [362] [363]
Algunos de los primeros tartanes de regimiento que aún sobreviven son:
A finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX, las mujeres de Escocia estaban especialmente "deseosas de vestirse con los cuadros escoceses de sus maridos", en telas de una calidad particularmente fina, según los registros de Wilsons de Bannockburn. [347] Después de que los regimientos de las Tierras Altas demostraran su valentía y eficacia en varias campañas militares, la gloria asociada a ellos hizo mucho por mantener vivo, inicialmente entre la nobleza y más tarde entre el público en general, el interés por el tartán y los kilts, que de otro modo podrían haber caído en el olvido debido a la prohibición de la Ley de Vestimenta. [389] El tartán con cinturón se abandonó en favor del pequeño kilt, alrededor de 1814. [336] [353] Después de la fiebre del "tartán de clan" de principios y mediados del siglo XIX , varios regimientos posteriores de las Tierras Altas adoptaron algunos de los tartanes de clan recientemente acuñados para sus uniformes (invirtiendo el flujo original de regimiento a tartán de clan). Algunas de estas adopciones aún se utilizan en el regimiento hoy en día.
Los regimientos de las Tierras Bajas (que datan de alguna forma de 1633 y nunca antes habían vestido el uniforme de las Tierras Altas, sino una variante del uniforme del ejército regular) fueron equipados con pantalones de tartán en 1881. Esto los vinculaba con los regimientos de las Tierras Altas vestidos con faldas escocesas y los diferenciaba de ellos. [390] Por lo general, se usaba el tartán "Gobierno" (Black Watch), aunque algunas unidades se diversificaron más tarde. A varios regimientos de las Tierras Altas se les asignaron nuevamente nuevos tartanes que eran tartanes de clan en lugar de tartanes específicos de la unidad, hasta principios del siglo XX. [291]
Hoy en día, alrededor de una docena de tartanes se utilizan oficialmente (y media docena más de manera no oficial) entre todos los regimientos escoceses históricos supervivientes , que en gran medida se han fusionado desde 2006 como batallones en el Regimiento Real de Escocia , parte de la División Escocesa, Galesa e Irlandesa . [391] Estos tartanes solo se usan en uniformes de gala y de banda de gaitas, después de los cambios prácticos en los uniformes introducidos a principios de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que eliminaron los kilts y los pantalones de tartán en los uniformes informales. Algunas unidades militares de otros países también tienen sus propios tartanes. En total, hay al menos 38 tartanes documentados que en un momento u otro se han asociado con regimientos, aunque muchos de ellos también con clanes. [av]
Con una excepción que data de 1618 [393] y otra de alrededor de 1703-1715 [247] (ninguna de las cuales parece haber sobrevivido), se considera generalmente que los tartanes asociados por nombre con clanes escoceses datan en su mayoría de principios o mediados del siglo XIX, [1] [394] [395] [396] [131] [397] [398] algunos pocos de finales del siglo XVIII como mínimo, [93] [399] [337] dependiendo de cómo se defina "tartán de clan". La creencia de que los tartanes de clan son un sistema "antiguo" de diferenciación simbólica familiar es generalizada, incluso apasionada, pero carece de evidencia sustancial aunque está abrumada por la evidencia en contra. Se trata de lo que J. C. Thompson (1992) llamó "el gran mito del tartán", [131] y James D. Scarlett (1990) "el culto del tartán". [244] El teniente coronel M. M. Haldane (1931) lo llamó una suposición que "ha adquirido un peso formidable por la mera reiteración" sin "un examen crítico de las pruebas". [400] Barnes y Allen (1956) observaron: [93]
No hay duda de que muchos 'setts' habían sido tradicionales en ciertos distritos durante siglos, pero la teoría de que eran una especie de uniforme del clan parece haber sido ahora bastante desacreditada.
En respuesta a la afirmación de que los tartanes de los clanes tienen "un significado político antiguo", Richard Martin , curador del museo Fashion Institute of Technology y más tarde del Costume Institute del Museo Metropolitano de Arte , escribió (1988): "[Esta] afirmación sobre la historia es errónea y se puede demostrar que es perniciosamente errónea". [401] Según el curador de las Galerías Nacionales de Escocia, AE Haswell Miller (1956): [397]
En resumen, el supuesto significado heráldico o de "insignia familiar" del tartán no tiene respaldo documental, y la creación del mito se puede explicar por una feliz coincidencia entre el deseo de los potenciales clientes, el fabricante y el vendedor. Aunque se exagera la antigüedad de los "tartanes de clan", lo que podría calificarse como su registro no oficial tuvo lugar durante el siglo XIX, y si estamos dispuestos a aceptar que unos ciento cincuenta años son suficientes para crear una "tradición", puede ser excusable aceptar el hecho consumado como una agradable -y tal vez no del todo inútil- vanidad nacional.
John Telfer Dunbar, investigador y curador de la indumentaria de las Tierras Altas, añadió: [402]
Hay muchos deseos de atribuir a reliquias de todo tipo una antigüedad mayor de la que realmente poseen. Es una lástima que se degrade la tradición de esta manera, y la aceptación de tales afirmaciones por parte de estudiosos posteriores ha sido un obstáculo constante para la investigación. A menudo se ha evitado la tarea más difícil de buscar en las fuentes originales en favor de una aceptación fácil.
Este mismo tipo de investigación fue realizada por Peter Eslea MacDonald, de la Scottish Tartans Authority , quien, utilizando todos los registros y muestras de empresas que se conservaban disponibles, reconstruyó y rastreó la historia de los patrones de tartán desde el principal tejedor de finales de la era georgiana hasta la era eduardiana, una empresa que fue fundamental en el diseño, la difusión y la aceptación reales de los tartanes de clan. Su conclusión: [398]
En la actualidad, los libros y las tiendas que se dedican a la indumentaria de las Highlands se centran principalmente, si no exclusivamente, en los tartanes de los clanes. Es posible que intenten sugerir que estos son los patrones reales que usaron los clanes escoceses a lo largo de la historia, hasta la Batalla de Culloden en 1746, incluida esta. Este no es el caso. La mayoría de los patrones anteriores a 1850 que llevan nombres de clanes solo se remontan a principios del siglo XIX y a la famosa empresa de tejidos William Wilson & Son de Bannockburn, cerca de Stirling.
La noción de tartanes de clan ha sido llamada "una historia de marketing sorprendentemente exitosa" [394] y un ejemplo de una tradición inventada , [403] aunque una que fue muy bien aceptada por los clanes a los que pertenecía y por la industria del tejido a partir de 1815, así como por el público en general desde alrededor de 1822 - "adoptada con entusiasmo tanto por el usuario como por el vendedor". [404]
Los precursores de los tartanes de clan fueron los tartanes distintivos de cada región (al menos desde principios del siglo XVIII, quizás incluso desde el siglo XVI), los tartanes de uniforme de regimiento (desde 1725 en adelante) y los tartanes personales de los nobles (que datan quizás de mediados del siglo XVIII, si no antes).
En la actualidad, los tartanes de clan son un aspecto importante de los clanes escoceses, y cada clan tiene al menos un tartán atribuido a su nombre (algunos oficialmente, otros no, y en algunos casos un tartán es compartido por varios clanes). Puede que los tartanes de clan no hayan sido en realidad tradicionales, pero se volvieron convencionales.
Varios escritores sobre tartanes han apoyado o se han opuesto a la idea de que los clanes hayan usado durante mucho tiempo tartanes distintivos como una insignia de identificación, interpretando la escasa evidencia como convenía a su punto de vista. [aw] Donde uno veía un uniforme de milicia, o el tartán de un noble individual, otro veía un identificador de clan. El erudito celta del siglo XIX John Francis Campbell de Islay estaba seguro de que, si bien los tartanes en general eran bastante antiguos, "los tartanes de clan uniformes no son más antiguos que los regimientos de clan", una opinión respaldada por Haldane (1931) en una serie de artículos en The Scots Magazine , [407] seguida por muchos escritores de tartanes más tarde.
La evidencia más temprana resumida a continuación podría haber sido más una cuestión de uniforme de milicia que de vestimenta de todo el clan; una distinción en esa época es difícil de determinar hoy en día, porque las tropas entonces estaban dirigidas por la nobleza terrateniente y una unidad se levantaba en gran parte en la tierra de su comandante a partir de sus miembros del clan. [ax] Tal incertidumbre definitoria también podría aplicarse al poema Grameid de 1691; [240] describiendo lo que parecen ser algunos tartanes de uniforme militar, [ay] podría reinterpretarse como un apoyo a una noción temprana de tartanes de clan, si uno quisiera definirlo como 'lo que la mayoría de los hombres de un clan vestían en la batalla'; Scarlett (1990) confirma que ha habido "argumentos acalorados" a favor de una interpretación de tartanes de clan. [242] Sin embargo, Robert Jamieson (1818) informó que los cuadros escoceses de "traje de campo" de los hombres de las Tierras Altas , para la guerra y la caza, eran diferentes de su vestimenta diaria: estaban hechos de material más grueso y usaban patrones destinados a mezclarse con el entorno natural, el cath dath o cath da' ('color de guerra'). [94] [az] Esto arroja algunas dudas sobre la interpretación de los tartanes de milicia como tartanes generales de clan. La mayoría de los tartanes de uniforme de regimiento posteriores (que no se adoptaron como tartanes de clan hasta principios del siglo XIX o finales del XVIII en unos pocos casos, cuando lo hicieron) eran variaciones del tartán Black Watch oscuro, de base verde, como se detalla anteriormente.
J. C. Thompson (1992) señaló "una inclinación victoriana típica a citar autores anteriores con poco o ningún intento de evaluar sus afirmaciones... El análisis moderno no puede darse el lujo de ser tan acrítico". [409] Scarlett (1990) observó en relación con esto: [410]
En la literatura sobre tartán, tanto antigua como tardía, se encuentran abundantes pruebas ilusorias que consisten en enunciar una opinión como un hecho y añadir alguna referencia histórica más o menos relevante para respaldarla, ya sea dando a entender o afirmando que esto prueba el punto. Que no pruebe nada en absoluto no viene al caso, siempre que la forma de la presentación sea suficientemente autoritaria; dado este tratamiento, la teoría más disparatada será aceptada, copiada de un libro a otro y así entrará en la tradición tartán. Es casi axiomático que cuanto más disparatada sea la teoría, más aceptable será...
Incluso D. W. Stewart (1893), que a veces se había mostrado comprensivo con la idea de que los tartanes de clan existían antes del siglo XIX, escribió: [411]
Some ... assure us that the antiquity of the so-called clan patterns is very great, and many writers allege in general terms that these designs were used as a clan distinction from the earliest period. ... The halo of romance surrounding the Jacobite struggle inclined many, and still induces others, to accept as authentic and reliable, statements which in different circumstances would be more closely sifted. Thus it is that the tartans ... have won much favour, and those who find one represented as bearing their name accept it as their ancient clan pattern without the inconvenience of investigation, or of posing any awkward questions.
The Victorians also engaged in some imaginative invention. Aside from the outright forgery of the "Sobieski Stuarts" , another extreme case is Charles Rogers, who in his Social Life in Scotland (1884–86) fantastically claimed that the ancient Picts' figural designs – which were painted or tattooed on their bodies, and they went into battle nude [412]– must have been "denoting the families or septs to which they belonged" and thus "This practice originated the tartan of Celtic clans."[413] Another asserted that tartan was invented around a thousand years ago by Saint Margaret of Scotland.[413]
Aside from the unreliability of early writers (and later copiers of them), part of the confusion and debate about clan tartans comes down to definitions. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, writing in 1938 and described as "immensely keen on [tartan] codification and the importance of it",[414] was one of the firmest proponents of the idea of very old clan tartans (in the particular sense of 'patterns consistently used for a period by certain clans', not 'patterns named for certain clans and claimed by them to the present').[ba] He held that some setts gradually became associated with particular families (clans and septs thereof) over time;[415] clan territories had mostly become stable by the 16th century.[416] D. W. Stewart's 1893 reference shows various cases of old district tartans later sometimes being identified for a time with specific families before 19th-century adoption of their own (usually different) clan tartans.[bb] Innes of Learney wrote of clan tartans that (notwithstanding the unusual 1618 case covered below) "the tendency was rather to insist upon a similarity of general hue than on similarity of detail",[419] a vague sense that is not what "clan tartan" usually refers to. He also reasoned that "it was not until about the 18th century that the clan tartans became conscious and acknowledged badges of identification".[420] However, the surviving period source material lacks this "acknowledgement" and does not actually suggest broad adoption of formal clan tartans (with clan names, particularity of detail, and a symbolic, identifying intent) until the early 19th century.
The "Sobieski Stuarts" (1842) and later D. W. Stewart (1893) made much of some changes to the feu duty paid in woven cloth by locals of Noraboll on the island of Islay to their lords. In 1587, under the Macleans, the cloth was to be white, black, and green; in 1617, under the Mackenzies, the demanded cloth-rent changed to white, black, and grey. These writers were sure, without any further evidence, that this represented a change of clan tartans.[421][bc]
The only clear instance of a clan-based and specific livery tartan to an early date, rather than simply regional and later regimental uniformity, is found in a 1618 letter from Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun (in the employ of the Earl of Sutherland) to Murray of Pulrossie, chieftain of the Murray branch in Sutherland but subordinate to the Earl of Sutherland, chief of Clan Sutherland (in turn recently become subordinate to the Gordon earls). The letter (rediscovered in 1909) requested Pulrossie "to remove the red and white lines from the plaides of his men so as to bring their dress into harmony with that of the other septs" of Sutherland.[393] The letter does not specify the tartan to which to conform; there have been sharply conflicting interpretations, and it is not even certain that it was a tartan that survived to the present.[bd]
A case of general colour-matching: In 1703–04, the chief of Clan Grant ordered that his "fencible" men obtain clothing in red and green tartan[246] (vaguely described as "broad springed"[246] but not specified in detail).[164] The material seems not to have been provided by Grant for them in a centralised way, but left to each man to furnish by his own means (on penalty of a fine).[246] "He did not order them to wear the 'Clan Grant Tartan', as one would expect if such a tartan existed at that time."[429] Some of the modern Grant tartans also use red and green; one was designed by Wilsons of Bannockburn in 1819 as "New Bruce" and shortly adopted by both Grant of Redcastle[430] and Clan Drummond;[431] one was reconstructed from an 1838 portrait;[432] another first appeared in the dubious Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842[433][434] ; and so on – none with pre-19th-century history. Nevertheless, D. W. Stewart (1893) proclaimed on this thin material that here was "a complete chain of evidence ... of the existence of a uniform clan pattern at the very start of the eighteenth century" – despite his own observation that portraits of leading members of the Grant family in this era do not show them wearing consistent tartans,[246][242] much less ones that agree with modern "official" Grant tartans.[395][435][bf] Scarlett (1990), though thinking this presaged "the Clan Tartan Idea", notes that "had the men of Strathspey been accustomed to wearing uniform tartans it would not have been necessary to order them to do so"[242] (twice over). He also observes that the lairds of Grant in this period were unusually bent on uniformity, one of them even issuing moustache regulations for clansmen;[242] the Grant red-and-green order cannot be taken as typical of everyday Highland practice. Telfer Dunbar (1979) notes that Highland military discipline hardly existed: "To these independent Highland chieftains restraint of any kind was irksome and unbearable, and to impose any rigid military discipline on their followers ... [was] found to be impossible."[436] Nevertheless, Mackay (1924) corroborates Grant militia wearing a livery tartan in 1715.[247]
In 1718, Allan Ramsay (the writer, father of the artist by the same name) published the poem Tartana, which combined colours with Latinised family names: "... If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn .... If lin'd with green Stuarta's Plaid we view ... Or thine Ramseia, edg'd around with blue ...." This has sometimes been taken as evidence of early clan tartans, despite possibly just referring to the edging and lining of garments (coloured facings were common on jackets of the time).[437][bg] Worse for this hypothesis, the Campbell tartans are predominantly green, Stuart/Stewart red, and Ramsay red and green. The extant red Campbell tartans are all modern reconstructions of patterns (that are unlike each other) from portraits;[439][440][441] Stewart/Stuart tartans with significant green date to the early 19th century[442][443][444][445][446] or much later;[447][448][449] and the Ramsay blue hunting sett dates to 1950.[450]
A Victorian volume, Old and New Edinburgh (1884) by James Grant,[451] stated that one Rev. Joseph Robertson MacGregor "attired himself in a full suit of the MacGregor tartan" in 1782, upon repeal of the Dress Act. But it misquoted the original source (and contained other errors). The original, A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings (1842) by John Kay, read: "dressed himself in the Highland costume peculiar to his clan", and says nothing of tartan, much less a suit of clan tartan.[452] While 1782 is within the late-18th-century range accepted by some researchers for some informal early clan tartans, this is not clear evidence of one.
John Lesley, bishop of Ross, in 1578 wrote a great deal about Highland customs, including dress, but did not include clan tartans (despite later being claimed to have been the original keeper of the Vestiarium Scoticum clan-tartans manuscript, now known to be a 19th-century forgery).[453]In 1688, William Sacheverell, a Manx politician, described Hebrideans of the Isle of Mull all wearing plaids, but the women in a different style of colour and pattern – not a consistent "clan" tartan.[239] Rev. Thomas Morer in 1689 described Highland garb in some detail, including tartan plaids and hose (made from the same cloth), but mentions no clan patterns.[454] Daniel Defoe (c. 1720) wrote also in considerable detail of Highland warriors of the prior century, and noted that the men were organised into "companies, all of a name", each led by "one of their own clan or family", yet he never mentions any distinction between tartans of these different groups, instead describing them all as wearing tartan with red and yellow over-checks,[226] strongly implying a regional style. This pattern of 17th- through 18th-century writings providing specifics of tartan and Highland dress, but nothing about clan tartans, is consistent.
Contemporary portraits show that although tartan is of an early date, the pattern worn depended not on the wearer's clan, but rather regional style and personal taste. They frequently depict subjects wearing multiple tartans at once.[420] Nor do the tartans shown match current clan tartans.[455][456] For example, the famous painting The MacDonald Boys Playing Golf (1740s), attributed usually to William Mosman but sometimes to Jeremiah Davison, shows them wearing five different tartans, and they are not surviving patterns (except as later reconstructions from the painting).[bh] Period tartans were also often of differing warp and weft (giving more of a striped than checked appearance), unlike modern symmetrical patterns.[458] Sometimes the portraits were copied, but with tartans that do not match, as if the designs were up to artistic whim.[459] As Scarlett (1990) put it:[460]
"[T]hese portraits have one thing in common: in no case does the tartan shown bear any close resemblance to the modern 'Clan' tartan. ... There is a great lack of evidence to show that the pattern of a tartan had any important significance in the early eighteenth century
D. W. Stewart (1893) had also noted this, about both portrait tartans and "examples of tartan fabrics which can be proved to date from the risings of 1715 and 1745".[411] Many of the portraits by Allan Ramsay the younger show the same shoulder plaid but with colours changed, suggesting it was the artist's own studio prop and used for modelling purposes by his clients who apparently did not care about the tartan pattern.[26][165][315] According to Scottish National Portrait Gallery keeper A. E. Haswell Miller (1956):[397]
Authentic documentation of the tartan previous to the 19th century is limited to a comparatively small number of contemporary portraits, and is negative so far as it provides any suggestion of heraldic significance or "clan badge" intention.
According to Trevor-Roper (1983):[461]
contemporary evidence concerning the rebellion of 1745 – whether pictorial, sartorial, or literary – shows no differentiation of clans, no continuity of setts.... Tartans were a matter of private taste, or necessity, only.
David Morier's well-known mid-18th-century painting of the Highland charge at the 1745 Battle of Culloden shows eight Highlanders wearing over twenty different tartans which have been analysed in detail;[462] very few of the setts painted resemble today's clan tartans,[293][301] though they are similar to existing samples of tartan cloth from the era.[463][bi] The method of identifying Highlander friend from foe was not through tartans but by the colour of the bonnet's cockade or ribbon, or perhaps by the different plant sprigs worn in the cockade of the bonnet.[174][131][bj][bk] In particular, the government Highland militia forces wore a badge in the form of a black cockade with red saltire; according to Mackay Scobie (1946), "each individual wore his own Highland dress with varied tartans, with the only uniform part being the 'Hanoverian' cockade and large coloured cross on the bonnet."[470] A 1745 letter on the Jacobite troops at Culloden describes "all ye Forces as well Horse as foot were in Highland Dress except ye body Guards wh. wore Blue bound wth Red"; i.e., only the bodyguards were wearing a uniform, and it was not of Highland dress.[471]
One of many tartan legends has it that the Highland-dress ban of the Dress Act was enacted because tartans were used as clan-identifying symbols or uniforms, but not a trace of this idea can be found in period sources. To the contrary, Burt (1727–37) was explicit that English objection to Highland dress (since perhaps 1703–04)[327] was general, because the garb served to distinguish the Highlanders as a people apart from the Lowlanders and other British (not distinguish Highlander from Highlander).[472][bl] Defoe (c. 1720) likewise mocked Highland dress as what he saw as a clownish costume that set Highlanders apart from everyone else, not each other.[226] Similarly, in an account of Jacobite trials, it was asked whether defendants had worn "Highland cloaths" in general, with no mention of clan-identifying patterns.[473] Extant MacDonald tartan fragments from the Battle of Culloden do not match each other or any current clan tartan named MacDonald.[469] Lord President Duncan Forbes of Culloden, keen on punishing the Jacobites with disarmament and other penalties, wrote a detailed letter laying out pro and con points (mostly con) regarding the proposed Highland-dress ban before Parliament passed it, yet never indicated anything like clan tartans, something that would have been a key argument to address.[474]
C. C. P. Lawson (1967) raised a point of logic: "Remembering the continuous clan feuds and the consequent state of more or less perpetual hostilities, a recognisable clan plaid would have been a positive danger to the wearer outside his own territory."[475] This may explain why the handful of early apparent examples of groups of men in similar tartan seem to have the nature of militia uniforms and are mentioned in the context of "fencible" bodies or outright battle (possibly aside from the 1618 case).[bm] Lawson also states: "The '45 supplies no evidence that tartans were used as clan insignia .... Relics of those tartans which were worn at Culloden or of the pre-1745 period bear no resemblance to any known modern tartan."[475] The Lord Lyon King of Arms in 1948, Sir Francis James Grant, wrote that pre-1745 tartans were qualitatively different from those of the 19th century and later.[476] Scottish United Services Museum curator Dunbar (1979) notes this as well.[477]
The Jacobite poets wrote much about the rousing appeal of Highland clans and Highland dress, even tartan specifically, but never mentioned clan tartans.[478] Similarly, multiple large volumes of traditional Highland folklore were collected and published by John Francis Campbell in 1860–1862 and Alexander Carmichael (who also collected tartan samples) in 1900, but they are devoid of any recorded references to clan tartans[478] (despite post-dating the popularisation of the notion among city-dwellers and the upper class).
The idea of groups of men wearing the exact same tartan as an identifier is thought to originate (aside, again, from the odd 1618 case) from Highland regiment units in the 18th century, starting with the Black Watch in 1739/1749.[293][213] According to Trevor-Roper (1983):[479]
[I]t was probably their use of it which gave birth to the idea of differentiating tartan by clans; for as the Highland regiments were multiplied ... so their tartan uniforms were differentiated; and when the wearing of tartan by civilians was resumed, and the romantic movement encouraged the cult of the clan, the same principle of differentiation was easily transferred from regiment to clan.
Particular regiments were often dominated by men raised from the same clan lands, and this may have blurred the line between regimental uniform and clan-identifying tartan. (And several tartans of extinct regiments survive today as clan tartans.) Newsome (2006) writes: "the practice of clans wearing these regimental tartans may have in fact been the inspiration for the 'clan tartan' system as we now know it."[213] Telfer Dunbar (1979), on the idea of the early Independent Highland Companies using distinct uniform tartans: "I feel sure that here we have much of the 'clan tartan' origin."[480] The end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries brought an unprecedented level of influence of military clothing styles, including Highland regimental, on civilian attire (even for women), especially among the social elite connected to regiments.[339] Some regimental tartans appear to have been named after their commanding officers, and this may be how they came to be associated with family/clan names over time.[481][367] Banks & de La Chapelle (2007):[322]
the notion of differentiation of tartan by clans might have evolved from this desire to distinguish on Highland regiment uniform from another. Certainly, its classification for military use laid the groundwork for many subsequent designs and the movement toward uniformity.
Scarlett (1990) also observed the connection to regional or "district" tartans:[244]
[B]asic patterns prevailed over wide areas and were modified by local weavers for their own ends. It can easily be seen that a local pattern of this kind, made for a captive clientele, might have become identified with the people of that locality who were themselves predominantly of one Clan or family group and its adherents and, when the belief grew up that Clan tartans had been worn since the beginning of time, have become, by retrospection, the Clan tartan of that group. There is no evidence that the Highlanders themselves looked on tartan in that light, however ....
Haswell Miller (1956) similarly noted: "We can ... readily accept that certain dyes would prevail in different regions and that traditional types of pattern might be followed in various parts."[397] Martin Martin in 1703 had described tartans as being identifiably specific to particular regions, but not clans.[243] There are numerous cases of tartans loosely associated with districts later becoming clan tartans. The best-documented case[8] is the Tullibardine pattern, one of the few modern clan tartans that can be traced (at all, not as a clan tartan) to the pre-proscription period.[315][8] It was long associated with Perthshire, and later adopted as the Murray of Tullibardine clan tartan, but sold by Wilsons as simply "Tullibardine" as late as c. 1830–40, and it was found for sale in a market by W. & A. Smith around 1850, who also said it was worn then by Charles Murray, Earl of Dunmore;[315] the first record of the pattern as "Murray of Tullibardine" is in their 1850 book.[8] It appears in at least five early portraits; four date to c. 1740–1750, the first of an unknown female sitter attributed to Cosmo Alexander,[bn] and three by Allan Ramsay (with the cloth painting completed by Joseph van Aken) which are not of any known Murrays (but of a Campbell, a MacLeod, and a MacDonald).[315] It is not until 1770 that a known Murray is painted wearing it (John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, by Joshua Reynolds),[315] which still does not necessarily make it a "clan tartan" at that early a date ("evidence for its historic use by that branch [of Clan Murray] is circumstantial at best").[8] The oldest version of it differs slightly as to colours and sett from the modern clan version.[8][bo]
Similarly, according to the Scottish Register of Tartans, the district tartan for Huntly,[303] originating in more complex form as the personal tartan of a Marchioness of Huntly[483] (probably Henrietta Mordaunt), was in use as a regional tartan since at least "the '45", and worn at Culloden by clansmen of Brodie, Forbes, Gordon, MacRae, Munro, and Ross, "which gives a strong indication of the greater antiquity of the 'District' setts compared to the Clan tartans."[483]
Some surviving early records of tartan manufacture are those of the Orphan Hospital Manufactory and Paul's Work, in Edinburgh, for the period 1734–37 and 1751–52; tartans were not named but given numeric designations such as "No. 2nd".[158] In 1745, the Caledonian Mercury of Edinburgh carried an advertisement for a "Great Choice of Tartans, the newest Patterns" – not clan or even district tartans, but newly devised ones, suggesting a fashion market driven by novelty not supposed "heraldic" traditions. Even clan-tartans booster D. W. Stewart (1893) conceded: "This advertisement, it may be urged, is a stumbling-block in the way of those who argue for the antiquity of clan patterns; for it seems peculiar that, when the city was filled with Highlanders of all ranks and many clans, they should be offered not their ancient setts ...."[484] Other advertisements for tartan from 1745 to the early 19th century did not mention clans, or focus on the patterns at all, but rather on the forms in which the cloth could be ordered.[485] Even immediately after the repeal of the Dress Act in 1782, the demand was for "latest patterns and bright colours",[486] with no hint of a family heraldry aspect.
William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn, just south of the dividing line between the Highlands and Lowlands,[487] were the first large-scale commercial tartan producers;[105] founded c. 1765,[1] they had become the foremost supplier of tartan to the military by around 1770, and the dominant tartan weaver in general.[328] It was an endeavor that required the introduction of tartan recording, of standardisation of setts and dyes, and of consistency and quality control.[1][488][487] Wilsons corresponded with their agents (especially the son, James Wilson)[102] in the Highlands to get information and samples of cloth from the various districts to enable them to reproduce "perfectly genuine patterns". Wilsons recorded over 200 setts in addition to ones they designed in-house, collected in their 1819 Key Pattern Book of around 250 setts[1] (among earlier in-house volumes to the 1770s). These tartans were numbered, named after places, or given fanciful names such as "Rob Roy", later sometimes family names (after prominent members), sometimes foreign names like "Coburg", but usually not those of clans,[263][387][489][131] nor, when they did, often matching present clan patterns.[490][bp] A large proportion of the modern clan tartans, however, can be traced to this work – just often originally with numbers or unrelated names.[387] The evidence of direct adoption from Wilsons happening frequently completely overwhelms "ancient clan tartans" sentiment.[bq]
The Scottish National Dictionary, in providing an unusually discursive definition of tartan, includes: "[T]owards the end of the 18th century and largely through the enterprise of Messrs Wilson, weavers in Bannockburn, a series of tartans, each ascribed to a certain clan, was devised and is now accepted as authoritative, though almost entirely unhistorical."[503] Analysing the direct and strong influence of Wilsons' Key Pattern Book (KPB) on the later adoption of clan tartans , Eslea MacDonald (2012) concluded:[504]
Some of the 1819 KPB setts no longer retain their original names, others were altered or were the basis for a number of variations which were named or simply numbered .... Whatever their origins, these patterns gave rise to the idea of clan tartans as we know them today. In a very few cases a pattern's origins may have indeed been a lot older than the 1819 KPB but their contemporary names were almost always the work of Wilsons or subsequent writers.
The Cockburn Collection of 56 tartan samples (some of them duplicates) was put together between 1810 and c. 1825 (most likely 1816–25)[505][387] by Lt.-Gen. Sir William Cockburn, and is now in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.[387][506] This collection does ascribe particular family names to many of these setts (probably naming them after prominent individuals),[505] but only sometimes corresponding to current clan tartan associations (indeed, some patterns that are today associated with particular clans were given multiple different names in the Cockburn Collection).[br] There are many conflicts in name-to-pattern associations between this collection and that of the Highland Society of London around the same time.[505]
Even David Stewart of Garth, who was to become one of the chief proponents of the idea of clan tartans, observed in 1814 only that various heads of families seemed to have selected personal tartans and that there were also district tartans.[508] When Garth and his Highland Society of London solicited clan tartans from chiefs in 1815 , Col. Alexander Robertson of Struan, Chief of Clan Robertson/Donnachaidh/Duncan, wrote back:[509]
It does not appear to be appertained, either by tradition or by authentick history, that the different Clans in the Highlands of Scotland, wore any distinctive pattern or tartan. It is well known that they all had particular Colours, or Standards, emblematical of some of their most honourable attachments, but as far as I have been able to discover, they wore no uniform Garb.
At the beginning of the 19th century, a letter from an Inverness tailor to Wilsons of Bannockburn requested fine tartan cloth to be used for women's clothing, because the fashion was to wear husbands' regimental tartans (not clan tartans).[347] In 1829, responding negatively to the idea of Lowland and Borders "clans" wearing their own tartans, Sir Walter Scott – who was instrumental in helping start the clan-tartans fervour in the first place – wrote "where had slept this universal custom that nowhere, unless in this MS. [the draft Vestiarium Scoticum, published ultimately in 1842] is it even heard of? ... I would rather suppose that the author had been some tartan-weaver zealous for his craft, who wished to extend the use of tartan over the whole kingdom."[510] Also in the same year, he wrote: "The idea of distinguishing the clans by their tartans is but a fashion of modern date in the Highlands themselves".[511]
Another of the tartan legends has it that Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon, commissioned the design of a clan tartan based on Black Watch in 1793, kept one of three designs, then passed the other two on to cadet branches of the family.[512] This tale can be traced in unembellished form to 1793 records of weaver William Forsyth of Huntly which do not say this at all, only that Forsyth provided three potential designs for a regiment tartan, with yellow over-checks in various configurations, of which the Duke selected no. 2 for the unit, the 92nd Gordon Highlanders.[374]
Scarlett (1990) surmises that there must have been some informal clan tartans – a confluence of district tartans that had become associated with particular families, and adoptions of regimental uniform tartans by them – by the late 18th century, otherwise there is no explanation for where Stewart of Garth got the idea.[513] Scottish United Services Museum curator Maj. I. H. Mackay Scobie (1942),[399] Haswell Miller (1947),[514] and Barnes & Allen (1956),[93] also zeroed in on this timeframe. Eslea MacDonald (2010-11) observes, for example, the Murrays using the common Tullibardine regional pattern in portraits and in bed hangings at their clan seat, Blair Castle, 1770 – c. 1780 and possibly earlier.[315] Telfer Dunbar (1979), considering the 1703–04 Grant proclamation and the early regiments, suggests that "any uniformity of tartan was only to be found in an organised body of troops, or the 'tail' or following of a chief."[429] These possible comparatively early, informal clan tartans of the late-18th-century simply cannot usually be identified (when they survived) until the early 19th century.
It has been suggested by a modern chief of Clan Campbell and another of the clan executives that the clan had informally adopted what is now known as old Campbell or Black Watch tartan by the early 19th century, because so many of their men were already wearing it as part of regimental uniform[405] (three of the Independent Highland Companies that amalgamated into the Black Watch regiment in 1739–1751 were Campbell units).[480] Some time in or after 1806, when he became clan chief, the city-dwelling politician George Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll, created his own personal tartan, of Black Watch with a thin over-check of white and yellow added,[515] "to differentiate himself from the rest of the Campbells", i.e. because they were already so often wearing Black Watch.[405] This essentially may have been one of the earliest attested surviving clan tartans (and the duke's variant was an early declared personal tartan of a noble).[bs]
The idea arose among Scottish expatriates (especially in the Celtic societies, which encouraged members to wear "appropriate" tartans),[516] eager to "preserve" Highland culture,[1][516][517] that tartans had traditionally been named and that the names represented clan affiliations.[1] Among them was Maj.-Gen. David Stewart of Garth, a Black Watch veteran and vice-president of the Highland Society of London[518] (founded 1778).[387] He and fellow members Sir John Sinclair and Andrew Robertson were among the first proponents of the idea of clans being identified by tartans, despite the lack of evidence.[518][519][520][505][bt] The society also counted among its members the Prince of Wales[522] (the future George IV, who was to become instrumental to clan "tartanry" in 1822) and two dukes, among various itinerant actual Scots[523] – including James Macpherson of "Ossian" fame (or infamy).[524]
On 8 April 1815, the society resolved that the clan chiefs each "be respectfully solicited to furnish the Society with as much of the Tartan of his Lordship's Clan as will serve to Show the Pattern and to Authenticate the Same by Attaching Thereunto a Card bearing the Impression of his Lordship's Arms."[525] Many had no idea of what their tartan might be or whether they had one,[526] some provided only a vague description, and some claimed they had none.[522] But plenty were keen to comply and to provide authentic signed and sealed samples;[525][522][527] many (possibly most) turned to Wilsons of Bannockburn for a design,[516][492] while some directly adopted a regimental tartan as their own,[387][1][bu] and still others adapted designs from old portraits of clan nobles.[522][bv] Alexander Wentworth Macdonald, Baron Macdonald, wrote back to the society: "Being really ignorant of what is exactly The Macdonald Tartan, I request you will have the goodness to exert every Means in your power to Obtain a perfectly genuine Pattern, Such as Will Warrant me in Authenticating it with my Arms."[525] Finding no agreement within his clan on a pattern, Robertson of Struan ended up adopting the regimental tartan of the Loyal Clan Donnachie (Robertson) Volunteers; being based on the Black Watch pattern, it could not pre-date the late 18th century.[530] On the other hand, Sir John Macgregor Murray of Clan Gregor, who had spent most of his life in England and India, was writing instructions on the use of his clan's tartan by December 1818.[531] In 1819, Wilsons were engaged in correspondence to "send ... specimens of all coloured Tartans used by these Clans ...said to exceed thirty in number", to a writer in Italy preparing a book on clan tartans;[532] the same year, they also produced their Key Pattern Book of over 200 tartans (representing only a fraction of their total tartan output, presumably the most marketable designs, and not always under the same names as found in contemporary collections of Wilsons' tartan samples such as the Cockburn collection and that of the Highland Society).[533]
According to Trevor-Roper (1983), Wilsons were in a direct "alliance" with the Highland Society of London by 1819; the former saw a great marketing opportunity, and the latter provided a veneer of respectability as Wilsons helped the society pin tartans to clan names.[534][535] Banks & de La Chapelle (2007) concur: "The Wilson firm worked in tandem with the Highland Society, preparing tartan samples for the latter to certify as belonging to one clan or another."[490] Clan nobles (who sometimes contradicted each other, within the same clan, on what their tartan was or should be)[536] were apparently also "ready to adopt changes at the mere dictation of fancy" to improve designs.[537] From the "authentications" they received 1815–26, the society built up a clan-tartan collection (now in the National Museum of Scotland), with 34 authenticated specimens and about 40 others.[522][538][bw] Other such societies generated more interest, belief, and demand.[539] According to the analysis by Eslea MacDonald (2012), "Most of the pieces sealed [by clan chiefs] and deposited with the Society at that time were patterns woven, and in the majority of cases appear to have been designed, by Wilsons. This obviously means they could not have existed prior to c1765 when William Wilson started his business."[530] So many of Wilsons' stock tartans from their Key Pattern Book of 1819 were being renamed for clans that J. C. Thompson (1992) wrote: "Clearly the naming of tartans was just getting started in 1819",[131] and: "There was nothing people wanted more than an ancient clan tartan system, and they were determined to have one."[540] By 1821, advertisements for tartan cloth had shifted to include language like "true", "warranted", and "original", and began to stress antiquity and family connections.[541]
The 1822 visit of George IV to Scotland, in Highland garb and with a great deal of tartan-festooned public ceremony (arranged by Stewart of Garth and romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott of the Celtic Society of Edinburgh), had a profound tartan-boosting effect, including the invention of new clan-specific tartans to suit[542][387][543] (or renaming of old tartans to have clan names),[1][544] as clan chiefs had been asked to attend in clan tartans.[1] It caused a boom in the tartan-weaving business,[491] and a broader public notion that tartans should be named for families.[387][1] "When these two [Scott and Stewart of Garth] stage-managed the King's visit ... they fixed the Clan Tartan idea in the public mind."[544] Wilsons' pattern book in 1822 had expanded significantly with tartans named for clans, in addition to all their numbered setts.[502] According to R. Martin (1988), Wilsons and other weavers were made aware of the king's planned visit three or four years in advance, and had all that time to pad their catalogues with additional designs and to assign clan names to patterns often "probably picked entirely out of the air."[545] He added that "anyone looking at the tartan pattern books of 1819 to 1822 would have realized the cacophony of different names for the same [pattern], the chaos of clan attributions, and the complete capriciousness of that association."[546] A telling letter from a tailor, archived among the Wilsons papers, to the company in 1822 asked: "Please send me a piece of Rose tartan, and if there isn't one, please send me a different pattern and call it Rose."[493]
By 1824, an invitation to the Atholl Gathering, one of the earliest of the modern Highland games festivals, made it clear that participants should arrive "in the plaids or Tartans of their Clans".[547] In 1829, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder complained to Walter Scott about all the "uncouth, spurious, modern [tartans] which are every day manufactured, christened after particular names, and worn as genuine",[548] and also of "clans ... at this moment ignorantly disputing for the right to the same tartans which in fact belong to none of them but are merely modern inventions for clothing Regimental Highlanders".[549] Scott himself was backpedalling away from what he had helped create, and was suspicious of the recent claims about "ancient" clan tartans: "it has been the bane of Scottish literature and disgrace of her antiquities, that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves."[550]
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A wave of highly dubious books were published, all purporting to reveal true clan histories and tartans; they presented little in the way of evidence, but they caused enthusiastic adoption of clan tartans. The first of these, in 1831, was The Scottish Gaël or Celtic Manners, as Preserved Among the Highlanders by James Logan, containing 54 tartans (based on Wilsons' collection, that of the Highland Society of London, and other sources he alleged but did not name, plus some he collected or devised himself); the author ignored advice from Wilsons on which were actually old tartans, and included some erroneous, fictitious, and incomplete setts.[552][553][bx] He also included untenable assertions about the designs' antiquity; "Logan took the line that everything Highland was rooted impossibly far in the past", and was mocked in The Pall Mall Gazette for it.[544] Meanwhile, Wilsons and other weavers simply adopted some patterns from his book due to demand,[554][491][555] and also took to inventing all-new "clan tartans" to keep up with the growing market for patterns associated with names.[556] The archived correspondence of Wilsons in the 1830s shows that the company was frequently pressured by merchants for the "truest" and "real" clan patterns.[557] Logan, despite himself being involved in sham clan tartanry, observed that "fanciful varieties of tartan ... were being passed off as genuine" by Wilsons and other weavers.[493]
Logan was followed in 1842 by Vestiarium Scoticum by the so-called Sobieski Stuarts, purporting to contain 75 centuries-old clan tartans, illustrated in great detail but from vague textual descriptions.[558] Although it is now known to have been largely a forgery,[559][560][by] many of the visual tartan designs in this "final – and fantastic – codification"[560] of clan tartans were nevertheless adopted and still survive as accepted tartans of clans,[564][565] especially for Lowland clan names (which had hitherto never been associated with tartan or Highland garb at all).[387][172][566][567] Starting in 1822, Borders families had been redefining themselves as clans, and the book encouraged more of them to take on clan tartans and open clan societies.[568] Modern critics have even praised the lasting socio-cultural accomplishement of the Sobieski-Stuarts' works in helping establish a systemic clan-tartans legend while recognizing the bogus nature of their material.[bz]
Trevor-Roper (1983) believed that the Sobieski Stuarts had been in direct communication with manufacturers like Wilsons, and were advising clan chiefs on which tartans to choose, from as early as 1819;[570] J. C. Thompson (1992) agreed.[540] Dick Lauder certainly said they were doing so by 1829, and that Wilsons were already weaving many Sobieski Stuart samples by that year;[571] the company's own records the same year confirm orders for designs from the Sobieski Stuarts.[572] Vestiarium was followed soon after by The Costume of the Clans published by the Sobieski Stuarts in 1845;[554] the illustrations it provided, allegedly based on portraits, have proven to be largely a mixture of error and invention.[573] By 1849, John Sobieski Stuart was in discussion with a publisher to produce a new, cheaper edition of Vestiarium, in a series of small volumes "so that it might be rendered as available as possible to manufacturers and the trades in general concerned in Tartan ... and it was for the[ir] advantage and use ... that I consented to the publication." The same letter also proposed binding the manufacturers by contract to produce tartans that conformed exactly to the Sobieski Stuarts' specifications.[574]
Weavers like Wilsons were complicit, not passive, in the tartan boom. They had lost much of their military and export markets after major wars ended and colonies in the Americas and elsewhere had become more self-sufficient.[497] "The concept of differentiated clan tartans, newly popularized, was codified and developed by canny manufacturers .... Since the repeal of the [Dress Act], these tartan makers saw the prospect of a vast new market."[264] According to Alastair Campbell of Airds:[404]
One factor which has been decisive throughout the history of the development of the modern system [of clan tartans] has been the influence of the tartan manufacturers .... As with any marketing organisation it was important to maintain a steady flow of "new products", and every year new patterns were produced .... The idea of individual tartans providing a clan or family identity was a most attractive one, which was adopted enthusiastically by both wearer and seller alike.
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This heavy promotion for decades of the clan-tartans idea has been described as "inciting a rush to lay claim to the tartan to which one's family was 'entitled'".[575] Other 19th-century clan-tartan works followed.[564] Logan (by then president of the Highland Society of London)[570] returned, with illustrator Robert Ranald McIan, with The Clans of the Scottish Highlands in several volumes 1843–1849, which had inconsistently hand-coloured portraits of chiefs in clan tartans, which he stated were "acknowledged by the present chiefs and clans".[387] The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland in 1850 by Thomas Smibert drew heavily on Wilsons' patterns and on Logan.[576] In the same year, Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland by William & Andrew Smith was based on trade sources such as Wilsons, competing mill Romanes & Paterson of Edinburgh, and army clothier George Hunter's pre-1822 collection of setts (and some consultation with historian W. F. Skene).[576][409] Also in 1850, Gen. James Browne published History of the Highlands and the Highland Clans, another Vestiarium knock-off.[570]
In 1871, Gaelic folklorist and Highland dress fancier John Francis Campbell of Islay wrote in Clan Tartans:[577]
I have come to the conclusion that Sir Walter Scott and my friends the Editors of the Vestiarium Scoticum and Scotch Manufacturers of tartans are together responsible for the present flourishing and luxuriant crop of brilliant clan tartans .... I do not believe that the distinctions which are now made as to Clan Tartans ever prevailed at all, till Tartan became an important manufacture in Scotland in the reign of George the 4th
J. Claude produced the tartan pattern sample book Clans Originaux in Paris c. 1880, and some tartans were adopted from it,[ca] though its 185 samples were mostly of already-known tartans.[19] A second edition of The Costume of the Clans was published in 1892.[580] Another influential book was Donald W. Stewart's Old & Rare Scottish Tartans (1893), which included swatches of fabric; several accepted clan tartans date to this work.[581]
Books of this era also introduced lists of alleged clan septs, families of different surnames (often of English, Norman, or other non-Gaelic derivation) supposedly linked to particular clans as "extended family". It was a means of greatly increasing tartan sales by attaching many more names to extant tartan designs, but not well-grounded in any historical reality.[582][583][400] Two such works, both published by W. & A. K. Johnston were: Tartans of the Clans and Septs of Scotland by James Grant in 1886, revised by Henry Whyte in 1906 in more of a picture-book format (three tartans make their first appearance in the 1886 edition,[584] and various more in the 1906 version, with no provenance);[585] and What Is My Tartan? or, The Clans of Scotland, with Their Septs and Dependents by Adam Frank in 1896.[387]
The romanticised notion of clan tartans had become deeply embedded in the Scottish imagination and further afield.[172][586] "[I]t all got mixed up in the public mind and the myth of tartan as a kind of heraldry became established, not only in the eyes of outsiders, even the Clansfolk believed it".[587] On the cusp of the Scottish Renaissance and Gaelic Revival, most clans (including major Lowland families) had been assigned and had generally accepted one or more tartans by the late 19th century.
The first Edwardian book on the subject (aside from a larger 1906 "library edition" of Whyte as The Scottish Clans and Their Tartans with Notes),[585] was Frank Adam's 1908 The Clans, Septs & Regiments of the Scottish Highlands, which remains in print today (though in drastically edited form, by Sir Thomas Innes of Learney).[387][588] A variety of books, with colour plates, had been affordably and widely published about clan tartans by the mid-20th century. Three popular ones were The Clans and Tartans of Scotland by Robert Bain, 1938 (the first to use photographic halftone prints; revised and updated many times through 1983);[589] The Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland by Innes of Learney (later to become the Lord Lyon King of Arms as well as a founder of the Scottish Tartans Society),[590] 1938, advancing some clan-tartanry ideas his Lord Lyon predecessor Sir Francis James Grant considered "humbug";[588] and The Scottish Clans & Their Tartans published by W. & A. K. Johnston, 1945 (later editions re-titled The Scottish Tartans with Historical Sketches, edited by Innes of Learney), and based on previous works by Grant and Whyte. Many others followed in successive decades.[387]
The mass-market books (some with over 200 tartans illustrated) did much to cement the idea of clan tartans in the public imagination, as well as to consistently anchor particular tartans to particular clans. And the works were in more general agreement with one another than had been the Victorian "authorities".[cb] They also simultaneously increased the number of clans with their own assigned tartans, and reduced the number of tartans claimed to be those of certain clans to a more manageable number, probably after consultation with clan chiefs and clan society officers. They did, however, typically include sept lists, which today are widely regarded as bogus[582] (though many present-day clan associations still use them, as a means of attracting larger membership).
Almost every extant clan (with or without a chief) had at least one tartan associated with it by this era. Many clans have several well-accepted tartans. Sometimes they represent different branches of the family; e.g., there are separate tartans for Campbell of Breadalbane, Campbell of Cawdor, and Campbell of Loudoun, in addition to the general "old" Campbell tartan. In other cases, they are (at least ostensibly) for specific purposes such as hunting, mourning, formal dress occasions, or Highland dance competition; e.g., the MacFarlane dress[592] and hunting tartans[593] are different.
An important, more scholarly work was 1950's The Setts of the Scottish Tartans by Donald C. Stewart[594][cc] (son of the aforementioned D. W. Stewart).[387] The younger Stewart has been hailed as "the founder of serious tartan research"; originated now-standard methods for indexing tartans; and would go on to help expose the Vestiarium Scoticum as a fraud, in Scotland's Forged Tartans, co-authored with J. Charles Thompson in 1980.[387][596]
In the late 20th century to present, clan and other tartans also have been catalogued in databases. A small number of new official clan tartans (mostly specific-purpose "side" tartans, like dance tartans) were registered in tartan databases in the 21st century.[cd]
Regarding modern misrepresentations of clan tartans on historical figures in films and even museums, Scarlett (1990) wrote: "so widely have the tartan myths been spread that any script- or guide-book writer will, in complete ignorance, write the most arrant nonsense and never think that it might not be true. ... Once false information has been disseminated by a supposedly authoritative body it is virtually impossible to correct it."[598]
The "officialness" of clan tartans has varied widely, and still does today. Although it is possible for anyone to create a tartan and assign it any name they wish, the only person with the authority to make a clan's tartan "official" is the chief.[387]
Some clans have had no chiefs for some time, while only a majority subset of those with living chiefs in the modern era made direct proclamations as to their clan tartans and registered them with the Lord Lyon.[ce] Some time after the launch of the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) in 2009, the Lord Lyon stopped recording clan tartans, deferring to SRT for this purpose. Some of the clan tartans were simply adopted by custom,[cf] and have remained rather consistent into the 21st century. A clan booth at a Highland games event is likely to proudly display at least their best-known clan tartan, regardless whether a chief has declared it official.
However, some chiefs have been quite adamant about what their clan's legitimate tartans are. Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell in the late 20th century, excoriated attempts to claim there were other than the four aforementioned particular Campbell tartans (and specifically rejected the personal-variant tartan of the 6th Duke).[405] Similarly, Sir Malcolm MacGregor, chief of Clan Gregor, has written that only four MacGregor tartans (plus a newer dance tartan) are legitimate, out of 10 or more alleged ones found in a tartan database, which he blamed on "indiscriminate commercialisation ... disingenuous and lead[ing] to confusion".[601]
In at least one instance, a clan tartan appears in the coat of arms of a clan chief and is considered by the Lord Lyon as the "proper" tartan of the clan: The crest of the chief of Clan MacLennan is A demi-piper all Proper, garbed in the proper tartan of the Clan Maclennan.[602][cg]
Some chief-authenticated clan tartans are quite late arrivals. In 1961, the Clan Davidson main tartan was replaced (and registered with the Lord Lyon) by one of multiple disputed chiefs, Sir David Davidson of Allt Dinnie, with a design dating to 1893, in place of an older white-striped version.[603] Chief Charles Shaw of Tordarroch in 1971 replaced the old Shaw tartan (a Black Watch variant based on a misprinted image in Logan & McIan (1847))[604] with a new pair (dress[605] and hunting)[606] designed in 1969 by D. C. Stewart based on more historical sources.[607] Clan Mar had no approved tartan until Chief Margaret of Mar registered one in 1978 (from a design that may pre-date 1850);[608] their dress/red tartan was not adopted until 1992 (from a design dating to the 18th century).[82] The MacLeod red tartan was approved by Chief John MacLeod of MacLeod in 1982, to join much longer-standing yellow and blue tartans of the clan; it was based loosely on what appears in a 1748 portrait of Chief Norman MacLeod by Allan Ramsay and Joseph van Aken.[609] Baron David Lumsden of Cushnie-Lumsden in 1996 approved the Clan Lumsden hunting sett by Peter Eslea MacDonald[610] (though technically the baron was just the chieftain of the Cushnie-Lumsden branch). In 1998, Chief Dugald MacTavish of Dunardry approved a 1958 design as the MacTavish dress tartan.[611] In 2005, Chief Gillem Lumsden of that Ilk registered a new main Lumsden tartan with the Lord Lyon,[612] based closely on that of a c. 1790 Lumsden family waistcoat.[613] Also in 2005, a pattern for Duncan of Sketraw was approved by Chieftain John Duncan of Sketraw, based on a 1930s design.[614] In 2007, Chief Fergus D. H. Macdowall of Garthland designed the Clan MacDowall tartan (the clan previously used MacDougall or Galloway district); he registered it with the Lord Lyon and Scottish Tartans Authority in 2008.[615][616] The Cochrane hunting tartan was designed personally by Chief Iain A. D. B. Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, in 2008.[617] The Clan Carruthers tartan was approved by Chief Simon Peter Carruthers of Holmains in 2017.[618]
Aside from regimental and clan usage, tartan has seen broad (and sometimes highly politicised) use by the general public in the modern era. By the 19th century, the Highland romantic revival, inspired by James Macpherson's "Ossian" poems and the writings of Sir Walter Scott, led to wider interest in tartan and other things felt to be Gaelic and Celtic. Clubs like the Celtic societies welcomed Lowlanders, and tartan was rapidly appropriated[545] as part of the Scottish national identity[619][620] (and part of broader British dress as a familiar exoticism).[621][622]
The period of widened public interest in tartan and Highland dress after the repeal of the Dress Act in 1782 has been called the Highland Revival.[32][ch] While tartan had already seen more nationwide use from 1707, as a Scottish nationalism symbol against union with England,[269] it was turned on its ear to become a romanticised symbol of union loyalism in the early 19th century,[172][624] an era in which prominent conflicts caused a patriotic influence of military (including Highland) style on civilian clothing,[ci] even among women[339][627] despite its overtly masculine focus.[628][629][165] First among the northern gentry and later among the common people more broadly, there was a renewed interest in tartan and Highland dress, despite the long period of prohibition – largely due to the glory associated with the Highland regiments' exemplary service in various military campaigns.[630] "Highlandism"[631] became a romantic, mythologised (even fictionalised) and colourful escapism[632][337] even as Lowland Scotland itself was becoming one of the most industrialised places on earth, and the entire nation was undergoing the social upheavals of union and empire, of large-scale warfare, of urbanisation, and of modernisation during the Scottish Enlightenment.[633] The bloody French Revolution of 1789–1799 had also helped inspire a British setting aside of old Stuart and Hanoverian rivalry.[634]
Before the clan tartans rush began in 1815, tartan was already being aggressively marketed to the general public as "fancy" cloth with names that commemorated famous events and people, even fictional characters from books and songs, e.g. "Waterloo", "Flora MacDonald", "Sir Walter Scott", "Wellington", "Maggie Lauder", and "Meg Merrilees". This inspired a novel perception that tartans should be named.[635] Some of the designs by leading weaver Wilsons of Bannockburn by this period were considered recognisable on sight.[636]
In 1822, Maj.-Gen. David Stewart of Garth, who was with both the Highland Society of London and the Celtic Society of Edinburgh,[637][520] published Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland, the first of a number of 19th-century books lionising the Highlanders, the clans, and the tartaned regiments.[628][527] The various Celtic/Highland societies throughout Britain had already been driving a rise in tartan demand since the late 18th century.[638][363] The societies liked wearing Highland dress – in their own assimilated, urban idiom,[cj] such as tartan frock coats[343] – and devising new tartans; it has been suggested that they were engaging in a sort of "internal colonisation", imposing what they wanted to see rather than simply recording what was traditionally Highland.[639] Aside from tartan fabric's increasing use in non-Highland styles of clothing, Highland dress itself had already become highly stylised, quite removed from the simplicity of its peasant origins;[640] this was a trend that would continue throughout the later Victorian period.
The popularity of tartan was greatly increased by the royal visit of King George IV of the United Kingdom to Edinburgh in 1822, with other nobles including Lord Mayor of London Sir William Curtis,[642] in Highland garb. George was the first reigning monarch to visit Scotland in 171 years.[542] The pageantry invented for the event, which was nicknamed "the King's Jaunt", brought a sudden consumer-driven demand for tartan cloth[491] and made it the national dress of the whole of Scotland.[542][643][619][644] The 21 days of festivities were organised by the Jacobitism-romanticising but staunchly unionist[172] Walter Scott, who was another co-founder of the Celtic Society of Edinburgh, and military officer David Stewart of Garth.[518] They urged Scots (most of whom were Lowlanders) to attend "all plaided and plumed in their tartan array"[645] in "complete national costume".[643] One contemporary writer sarcastically described the pomp that surrounded the celebrations as "Sir Walter's Celtified Pageantry",[645][646] and another as a "plaided panorama".[643] Clan chiefs, expected to be kilted, had little choice but to take the event seriously, and arrived to show their loyalty in something of a panic, with tartaned retinues of half a dozen[264] to up to 50 per clan[647] (equipped at great expense, and with only about a month's official notice), in a city overflowing with Highlanders, Lowlanders, and English spectators decked in tartan,[648][492] a sight that Scott's own son-in-law and biographer John Gibson Lockhart called a "Celtic hallucination".[490] Thousands of spectators attended the many events arranged for the visit.[264] The formal ball, reserved for the gentry, required Highland dress for admittance, and some 300 tailors were employed to supply it.[647]
The royal endorsement of tartan and Highland-wear did much to erase any lingering association of them with the servile peasant class of the Highlands[649] (or the region's bands of mountain bandits, for that matter).[647] Because Scott had become "the acknowledged preserver of Scotland's past" through his historical novels, the legend he helped create of tartan and Highland dress as a Scotland-wide tradition rooted in antiquity was widely and quickly accepted, despite its ignoring and erasing of cultural diversity within the country[640] (of Gaels, Norse–Gaels, Scoto-Normans, and Lowlanders of largely Anglo-Saxon extraction). "A bogus tartan caricature of [Scotland] had been drawn and accepted, even by those who mocked it, and it would develop in perspective and colour."[650] George IV's visit – which was not just theatrical but thoroughly political, in marrying Hanoverian power and loyalty to Stuart ideology and pride[651] – has been described in by Angus Calder (1994) as the catalyst by which "a Union of practical convenience became a Union of irrational love and fears, sublimated in militarism, tartanry, royalism and, eventually imperialism".[652] R. Martin (1988) added: "it would seem that this visit presages the acts of orchestrated political propaganda that we have come to know very well in the 20th century."[545]
,_2nd_Marquess_of_Bute,_by_Henry_Raeburn,_c._1829.jpg/1280px-John_Crichton-Stuart_(1793%E2%80%931848),_2nd_Marquess_of_Bute,_by_Henry_Raeburn,_c._1829.jpg)
Following the royal visit, the tartan industry boomed,[653] and the number of available tartans increased tenfold;[654] in 1822, Wilsons' pattern book had numbered setts in the hundreds, and introduced many more with proper names.[502] Scarlett (1990) writes that "Tartan was no longer the dress of northern barbarians or political dissidents; it had become respectable and the garb of loyal subjects."[655] Books which documented tartans began to appear and added to the "tartanry" craze. James Logan's romanticised work[555] The Scottish Gaël (1831) was the first such publication, and led the weaving industry to adopt new patterns, even Logan's invented or erroneous ones.[554]
The result of these flurries of attention has been described as an "astonishing frenzy of excitement into which [patronage of tartanry] threw the citizens of Edinburgh and much of the rest of Scotland".[656]
From the 1820s, Georgian and then Victorian portraiture of clan nobles continued the earlier theme of regimentally re-styled Highland dress, with jewels, gold, and other symbols of aristocracy – a "synthetic Gaelicism".[657] The funerals of Sir John Macgregor Murray and Alasdair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry, in 1822 and 1823 respectively, were marked by tartan, bagpipes, and "wailing" of clansmen – "a feudal sight in an increasingly industrial age".[658] A large public tartan affair was the 1824 Atholl Gathering[547] (an annual event that, after a period of abeyance, continues to the present). From the end of proscription through the Georgian promotion, "distrust of the Highlands became fascination",[659] and tartan and Highland garb "moved from the periphery to the very center, accompanied by all the processes of forgetting and imaginative re-creation".[660] Tartan, no longer the everyday traditional dress of Highland "barbarians", had become, in altered form, all the rage among the Scottish upper and even middle classes as formal attire.[661] This popularisation of tartan increased its marketability in the Lowlands, in England, and in the colonies, and provided a boost to the Scottish textile industry.[330]
Tartan had begun making appearances in civilian Georgian fashion throughout Britain and into continental Europe, as illustrated in publications such as London's Gallery of Fashion (1787) and La Belle Assemblée (1808), and (after Paris was famously occupied by Highland regiments during the Waterloo campaign and the fall of Napoleon in 1815)[662][628][663] in the French periodicals Le Prétexte (1815)[664] and Costumes Parisiens (1826); tartan was in vogue in Paris in particular in this period,[665][666] and approximations of Highland soldiers even appeared in Parisian plays at the time.[667] Tartans associated with family names became popular, but there was also a brisk trade in new tartans commissioned for societies, to commemorate events, in honour of famous persons, and designed simply to personal aesthetic taste.[668] Manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand.[669][619] By 1819, dominant tartan weaver Wilsons of Bannockburn[328] (also a carpet and ribbon weaver)[670] was keenly interested in exploiting the civilian market, due to a reduction in regimental demand, and introduced many more patterns, providing cloth in various grades.[671] By 1820, the company had access to 132 looms;[672] they experienced a four-fold increase in output in 1821, leading up to George IV's visit,[643] after which they acquired 40 more looms[493][654] in an add-on building,[669] named the Royal George after the king,[493] and expanded into a new mill in 1822, mechanising more and more to keep up with demand.[672] They stopped weaving muslin to focus on tartan,[669] and produced it in a range of qualities from finest merino wool to cheap linsey-woolsey blends, demonstrating that whatever high-class associations tartan had taken on, there was significant working-class demand.[673] In 1829, a merchant wrote to Wilsons that "We are like to be torn to pieces for tartan; the demand is so great we cannot supply our customers", and there was great demand for the newest patterns.[557]
Georgian and later Victorian entrepreneurs not only created new tartans, but new tartan objects called tartanware, starting as far back as the proscription period in the form of wine glasses decorated with tartan and enamel Jacobite portraits.[301] Tartan decorated an assortment of common household objects, such as snuffboxes, jewellery cases, tableware, sewing accessories, desk items, and even doorknobs and furniture – a tartan knick-knack market for tourists that continues through the present in the Highlands.[674] Visitors to the Highlands went home with tartanware, and Scotland-based businesses sent tartanware out as gifts to customers. Some of the more popular tartans used were the Stewart, MacDonald, MacGregor, MacDuff, MacBeth, and one fancifully named "Prince Charlie".[675][676][677] Today, tartanware is widely collected in England and Scotland.[678] There was a symbiotic relationship between tartanware production and interest in tartans generated by books on the subject: a tartanware manufacturer from 1820 onward was W. & A. Smith, of Mauchline, also incidentally the publishers of Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland (1850).;[679] tartanware was sometimes more specifically called Mauchlinware.[680]
Leading up to the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign in 1837, tartan was a brisk trade in London, Manchester, and other English cities and towns.[681] In 1839, the Eglinton Tournament, a medieval re-enactment featuring jousting and a ball, was organised in North Ayrshire by Archibald Montgomerie, Earl of Eglinton; it drew some 100,000 spectators, who had been asked to attend in plaids, and included George Murray, Duke of Atholl, arriving with an entire regiment in tartan, his newly re-formed Atholl Highlanders[682] (which still exists as Europe's last remaining private military force).
The first publication showing colour plates of an array of tartans was the Vestiarium Scoticum (meaning 'wardrobe of the Scots'), published in 1842,[564] and it included a first: tartans for Lowland families. It was the work of two brothers: John Carter Allen and Charles Manning Allen, from Surrey, England, who used a variety of assumed names. The two implied they were grandsons of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, and consequently later became known as the "Sobieski Stuarts". They claimed further that the Vestiarium was based on a 1571 manuscript on clan tartans – a manuscript which they never managed to produce. It was not known at the time, but many of the tartans were simply invented by the brothers, and others were taken from early-19th-century sources like the Cockburn and Wilson collections.[683][387] The brothers heavily favoured basic checks, or crudely divided checks, with thin over-checks added; they had an identifiable style of tartans, assessment of which has varied from "few can be called inspired"[50] to "quite novel and singularly gorgeous".[684] The Vestiarium was followed by their equally dubious The Costume of the Clans in 1845.[554] The books, which "added mystery, romance and some spurious historical documentation to the subject",[560] triggered another wave of interest in tartans, and the enthusiasm generated by these publications led the way for numerous tartan books in the later 19th century.[645][564][cl]
The sudden availability (and almost unquestioning acceptance) of Lowland tartans helped spread tartan further in popularity. "The [tartan] cult was gathering strength and tartan was no longer 'Highland', it had become 'Scottish'."[587]
Twenty years after her uncle's royal visit to Scotland, Victoria and her husband Prince Albert made their first trip to the Scottish Highlands in 1842; she was the first monarch to set foot in the Highlands since Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 16th century.[685] The visit involved her large royal party being met with several theatrical tartan-kilted welcomes by Highland nobility and their retinues, with much sycophantic newspaper fanfare (while the common people were experiencing considerable misery); the Queen wrote: "It seemed as if a great chieftain in olden feudal times was receiving his sovereign".[686] The monarch's early trips to Scotland were seen as a royal endorsement and had a transformative effect on the image of the country, as a now-loyal land of tartan, pipers, and kilted martial display.[687]
Victoria and Albert leased Balmoral Castle, in Aberdeenshire, in 1848 (and bought it in 1852)[688] as a private royal demesne and hired a local architect to re-model the estate in feudalised Scots baronial style, starting a "sham-castles" trend.[689] Prince Albert personally took care of the interior design, where he made great use of tartan. He used the royal Stewart (red) and the hunting Stewart (green) tartans for carpets, while using the dress Stewart (red and white) for curtains and upholstery.[565] Prince Albert (who often wore the kilt at Balmoral) is said to have created the Balmoral tartan, still used as a royal tartan today.[690] They even decorated their carriage with tartan.[691][692] Their adoption of a showy form of Highland dress inspired adoption by subject "who would have previously left Highland dress to the festivals of the Scots."[680]
The royal couple spent a considerable amount of time at their Scottish estate (nearly 7 years in total),[693][cm] and in doing so hosted "Highland" activities. Victoria was attended by pipers,[695] and her children were attired in Highland dress.[696] Prince Albert himself loved watching the Highland games[697] and the pair became patrons of the Braemar Gathering.[698] (Support from and attendance by various nobles may have helped preserve such events to the present, but it also "tartanised" them permanently, all the way into the 21st century.)[699] The royal enthusiasm for and patronage of Highland things generated more early tourism to the Highlands,[575][700][cn] and a boost to business in the region as far as Perth and Edinburgh.[702] It also spread tartan-wearing to other northern British lords and ladies, who began to invent complicated etiquette rules of dress for Highland garb, which had the effect of increasing the sense that it was upper-class attire.[172][703][587] Adoption of tartan continued to spread into England; Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, devised a livery tartan for his men in 1848.[704] Tartan, though a "pseudo-Caledonian masquerade",[705] had become "the stuff of loyalty to the crown",[706] with "a spurious royal and aristocratic cachet".[707] This royal promotion was also noted abroad, with the effect that tartan became one of the widest-recognised cultural-identity symbols for the entire British country.[708]
Despite their considerable devotion to charity (up to 20% of their Privy Purse income),[709] Victoria and Albert, along with their friends in the northern gentry, have been accused of using their "Balmorality" – a term coined by George Scott-Moncrieff (1932) to refer to upper-class appropriation of Highland cultural trappings, marked by "hypocrisy" and "false sentiment" – to trivialise and even fictionalise history.[710] According to Fiona K. Armstrong (2017), they engaged in long-term, tartan-blanketed escapism from the uncertainties of modernising, industrialised society and from pressing British societal problems, while worsening those problems in the actual Highlands.[710] The queen's Balmoral residency also had another detrimental effect on the Scottish Highlands; inspired by her residency, aristocrats who lived outside the Highlands began purchasing estates in the region, resulting in land-ownership disparities that persist into the present day.[711] The Highlands during Victoria's reign also became more accessible by road, rail, and boat.[697]
As the tartan and "romantic Highlands" craze swept over Scotland, the real Highland population suffered grievously from the Hungry Forties as well as the Highland Clearances, when thousands of Gaelic-speaking Scots from the Highlands and Isles were evicted by landlords (often the very men who would have been their clan chiefs) to make way for sheep[645][712] and for expansive deer-hunting preserves.[713] Scots were also largely disenfranchised from voting, and the Highlands were running out of young men, in great regimental demand to fight and die in foreign wars for the empire, and many emigrating otherwise,[714] with Victoria and Albert directly patronising emigration societies.[715] Nearly 2 million Scots moved to non-European destinations during the Victorian era (more than half the native-born Scottish people of the period), and took a measure of Highlandism with them[716] – "many of the generally understood images of the Highlands were held to be 'real' by people at the time".[717] This would have strong tartan-promoting results among the Scottish diaspora later;[718] Scarlett (1990) calls it a "tartan hunger that has been abroad from late Victorian times to the present day".[719]
Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1848 of the romantic reinvention of Highland customs as somehow generally Scottish: "Soon the vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were regarded as synonymous words."[720] In 1849, Sir John Graham Dalyell asserted that "forty years ago no reputable gentleman would have appeared in a kilt in the streets of Edinburgh."[721] Scott-Moncrieff (1932) likewise wrote of tartans being "misconceived" and worn all over Scotland (and even England) in the Victorian era as a part of the Queen's influence.[722] Increasingly-urban Scotland was putting on a "rural face"[723] (a trend that would continue with "kailyard" literature). Tartanry and Highlandism were popular in part as a counter to a sense (especially among the aristocracy) that Scotland was losing its separate national identity in the Georgian to Victorian era, being ever more Anglicised as just "North Britain" amid empire-wide modernisation.[724]
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In an 1849 letter to a publisher about a planned second edition of Vestiarium Scoticum, John Sobieski Stuart noted that tartan had become "extensively worn and manufactured" on the continent, as far away as France, Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary; he also expressed an interest in working directly with tartanware and tartan book makers W. & A. Smith of Mauchline.[725] The same year, the Duke and Duchess of Atholl (whose entire estate was prescribed tartan livery)[726] hosted a Highland-dress affair in London, the Royal Caledonian Ball, the first known charity ball (still a sold-out annual event today).[727] The 1859 opening of the massive Loch Katrine waterworks (to pump fresh water to Glasgow, running out of well water) was attended by Queen Victoria, with the Atholl Highlanders (cannon in tow), the Celtic Society of Glasgow, and an honour-guard unit called the Glasgow Volunteers putting on a tartan- and piper-laden display for the newspapers; it was a confluence of modern engineering and romantic–patriotic tartanry.[728] When the Prince Consort died in 1861, Victoria commissioned a tartan-kilted statue of Albert at Balmoral by William Theed.[729]
According to Jonathan Faiers (2008), Victoria had actually intentionally made tartan more popular for the benefit of the British textile industry.[730] By the 1860s, tartan was not only as popular in London as in Scotland,[731] leading weaver Wilsons of Bannockburn produced £80,000 of product per year, and employed 500–600 people. (It amalgamated with another of the family businesses, a carpet-weaving operation, in 1867, which continued to 1924.)[263] Around 1860, new synthetic aniline dyes allowed for production of tartans in vivid colours at more affordable prices, and their lower cost translated into more consumption of tartan by the middle class.[695]
As modernisation marched on, the world's first permanent colour photograph, taken by Thomas Sutton (using the three-colour process developed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell) in 1861, was of a tartan ribbon.[732] It was created by using red, blue, and yellow filters to create three photographs which were then combined into a composite. R. Martin (1988) notes that there was a confluence of unrelated technological "junctions and serendipities" in the mid-19th century that together broadly promoted tartan, including photography, consistently bright and more economical artificial dyes, affordable colour book printing, mass-production of soft but durable fine textiles, and applicability of printed patterns to middle-class products like tartanware – all "far-removed from the true peasant history of tartan."[733] Ian Brown (2012), a professor with a focus on Scottish literature and culture, has written that while George IV and Victoria (not to mention business interests in their wake, like the Wilsons of Bannockburn and the Smiths of Mauchline) seemed to have been "the winner taking over the loser's tokens", the renewed public interest in tartan within and beyond Scotland was not entirely owing to them, especially given the international interest in Highland-romantic works of Walter Scott and "Ossian". The acceptance of and even enthusiasm for tartan among the post-proscription upper class can be seen as a necessary attempt at reconciliation within a culturally diverse country, and the influence ran both ways, with old Scottish nationalism transmuting into a new unionism that demanded recognition of Scottish interests and institutions. "In short, it is an open question whether George IV in a kilt and Victoria and Albert at Balmoral are appropriating and subverting a set of values, or whether they are being appropriated and subverted."[734] Even the 1822 "King's Jaunt" had been stage-managed by two Scots with a keen interest in romanticising and promoting Gaelic and broader Scottish culture (historico-traditional accuracy notwithstanding),[640] and the Atholls' deep and tartan-arrayed involvement in Victoria's activities in the north can be viewed in the same light.[735] Both George IV[736][737][738] and Victoria,[739] primarily of German House of Hanover stock, came to identify strongly with their quite thin Scottish House of Stuart genealogy.
The 1863 funeral of the Duke of Atholl was another anachronistically feudal, tartan-and-pipers pageant.[740] In 1866–1870, Victoria and the Duchess of Atholl commissioned artist Kenneth MacLeay in Edinburgh to produce a series of watercolours of statuesque men in tartan Highland gear, representing common people from ghillies to shepherds and fishermen, "as they now are". Prints were published in 1870 as Highlanders of Scotland: Portraits Illustrative of the Principal Clans and Followings, and the Retainers of the Royal Household at Balmoral, with text by Amelia (Emily) Murray MacGregor, an attendant of Victoria as well as a Clan Gregor historian and the first female Gaelic lecturer. A tartanistical fantasy, as well as another exercise in "Highlander as noble savage", the art book necessitated canvassing Scottish aristocrats for outfits and suitable models ("specimens"), as the everyday people did not look the hyper-masculine part, were not able to afford such Highland-dress extravagances as were to be illustrated, and were more likely to be wearing trousers than kilts.[741] The resulting book is the most detailed record of the "proper", codified Victorian-era Highland dress and accessories, which "removed tartan from its blustery nonchalance to an ordered set of adornments"[731] – most of which survive to the present, Highland dress being remarkably resistant to further major stylistic changes, Victorian styles having become "traditional". Tartan had also become more established throughout the 1850s and 1860s as a textile for European-fashionable rather than Highland women's clothing, from bodices and dresses to sashes and shawls (the never-extinguished ladies' plaids).[731] The tartan sash in particular was a favourite of the Queen,[731] and remains a common womenswear option, worn several different ways in modern Highland dress,[742] though it has little to do with original Highland clothing before the 19th century; it is an adaptation of the plaid to a style of the European nobility.
In 1871, at the Waverley Ball, a fancy dress affair in London, the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) and his brother Prince Arthur, long accustomed to Highland dress, arrived tartaned out as an old-time Lord of the Isles and as Bonnie Prince Charlie, respectively.[743] In 1872, ethnologist Jacob Falke wrote that "In Scotland indeed the plaid has still some importance, but it is an object of manufacture, and ... its motives have long ago become the common property of fashion, and indeed have become so permeated by it that what is genuine and old in it is scarcely to be recognised".[744] Since its 1880 re-opening, the Gaelic Society of Perth in the Lowlands held festivities that involved much piping and tartan-wear, into the early 20th century, despite the language-preservation organisation having nothing to do with Highland dress or pibroch; being swathed in tartan had somehow become vital to such events.[745] By 1883, Highland dress as proper courtly attire had become highly regulated, aristocratic, and formal, but "inclusive" in one sense – the tartan-wear was permitted at court for essentially anyone claiming Highland origins or land-ownership (even if natively English), not just the gentles of the well-established clans.[746]
In the Victorian era, tartan garments for women as well as men continued to be featured in fashion catalogues, in styles not derived from Highland costume, such as everyday suits and dresses.[575] Tartan had also become popular for children's clothing in continental Europe,[747] inspired by the royal children of Victoria.[748] In the United States, tartan was similarly worked into school uniforms, especially at Catholic schools.[749] The late 19th century saw tartan (sometimes in silk) in fashion throughout Europe, including in France (e.g. Paris, Lyon, and Alsace) and Italy,[750] and as far from Britain as Russia.[751] Founded in 1898, Walker's Shortbread has long been sold in royal Stewart tartan packaging around the world (especially for Christmas and Hogmanay).[752]
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In the Edwardian era, tartan had become less a component of men's clothing (with the decline in kilt-wearing) but more an important part of women's fashion,[76] including fanciful haute couture designs from Paris that had no connection to Highland style,[575] and many accessories such as petticoats, stockings, and blouses; masculine accessories included braces (suspenders), neckties, cummerbunds, and socks.[76]
Edward VII himself had grown up wearing Highland dress frequently.[696] There was also in this period into the 1920s a market for Highland-dress etiquette booklets, which tied into the era's "dress sense" of decorum and class[414] . Because of its associations with the British aristocracy, Scottish clans, and Highland military, tartan had developed an air of dignity and exclusivity.[753] Because of this, tartan was to make periodic resurgences in the world of fashion. The tartan uniforms of the Scottish Regiments were an important recruiting tool during World War I; as Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery, put it: "there is nothing so magnificent in our army as the swing of a kilted regiment".[754] Tartan's Georgian re-orientation as a symbol representing unionism and empire continued well into the first half of the 20th century,[755] though outright tartanry and Highlandism on the part of the upper class waned, especially after about 1920.[756] Nevertheless, Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, was a life-long devotee of tartan, often wearing more than one at a time.[575]
Tartan patterns (often simple, unnamed ones) remained commonly used for skirts and pinafore dresses (jumper dresses) in Catholic and other private school uniform codes in North America and also in public and private schools in New Zealand. The style spread to many other places, including South America, Japan[673] (which sometimes imports tartan directly from Scotland),[757] and Hong Kong.
Harry Lauder (properly Sir Henry – he was knighted for his war-effort fundraising during World War I) became world-famous in the 1910s and 1920s, on a dance hall and vaudeville entertainment platform of tartan Highland dress, a thick Scots accent, and folksy songs about an idealised, rural Scotland, like his hit "Roamin' in the Gloamin'". At one point, he was the highest-paid performer in the world, and toured the United States, Australia, South Africa, and of course the UK to sold-out audiences. A Lowlander himself, Lauder has been credited with (and blamed for) keeping alive a tartanry-and-Highlandism image of Scotland, with critics calling him a "kilted clown" who promoted the idea of Scotsmen "clothed like the chieftain of Clan McCrazy".[758]
By the mid-20th century,[759] annual Highland games events, modelled on the traditional events in Scotland, had been established not just in Scotland but throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, among other places with a notable Scottish diaspora, which totals about 50 million people worldwide.[760] There are dozens of such events in Scotland,[761] and at least 260 annual Highland games events worldwide as of 2000,[762] more than 100 of them in the US alone, and dozens more in Canada.[761] They are closely intertwined with bagpipe band competitions (which date to 1781), a lasting source of tartan imagery in their regiment-inspired Highland uniforms.[763]
The games' rather flamboyantly[764] tartaned subculture is sustained outside Scotland primarily by multi-generational Scottish descendants rather than by direct Scottish expatriates.[765][766]
Tartan Day, an annual symbolic ethnicity holiday among the Scottish diaspora, is a growing affair celebrated on 6 April, the date on which the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320. Tartan Day was first declared in Nova Scotia in 1987, and was essentially nation-wide in Canada by the 1990s. It has since spread to Australia (with varying levels of official recognition, 1989–1996), the US (1998), and other places including New Zealand,[767] and even Argentina[768] and Paris, France.[769] In New York City, it has turned into an entire Tartan Week since 1999, with honorary "grand marshals" that are usually Scottish celebrities.[770]
The term tartanism (as distinct from tartanry) has been coined by Ian Brown (2012) for this international tokenisation of tartan as an ethnic-identity symbol, evolving to some degree independently to suit diasporic cultural needs and unrestrained by the views of the originating Scottish "home" culture.[771] According to Ian Maitland Hume (2001), tartan and the kilt are powerful symbols that "encapsulate many facets of a heritage which people aspire to access ... a part-mythical family origin for those seeking roots".[772]
The Scottish Tartans Museum and Heritage Center was opened by the Scottish Tartans Society in 1988 in Highlands, North Carolina; in 1994, it moved to nearby Franklin. The museum, which runs independently of STS, features over 600 tartans on display, including specimens dating to c. 1725, and Highland dress examples to ca. 1800.[773] (STS also operated a Scottish Tartans Museum in Edinburgh,[774] but it closed when STS did in 2000.) A major exhibition on tartan was produced by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York 1988–89, and another was created for the Edinburgh Festival in 1989.[775] Others followed in Italy in 2003, and Japan in 2018.[776] In April 2023, the Victoria and Albert Museum of Dundee (V&A Dundee) opened a design exhibit (running until January 2024) about tartan and its "shifting context", with goals of "challenging preconceptions of what tartan is, whether that be from a historical sense or fashion sense".[777][778]
D. Gordon Teall of Teallach, of the Scottish Tartans Society, observed in 1994:[779]
Tartans have always formed part of Scotland's historic heritage and it is a compliment to their country that they have become so widespread throughout the English and Gaelic speaking world. They are probably more popular now than they have ever been because they have come to symbolise the spirit of families, clans and districts and, more recently, corporate institutions.
Even as tartan has been bent to the cultural needs of the diaspora, as "the most straightforward and outward sign of ... affinity with Scottishness", and bent to the commercial intents of fashion, tourism, entertainment, and other industries, tartan's reception by native Scots in Scotland has been less favourable for decades, even the last century or so. Reasons include a feeling that it is not really a symbol of broad Scottish national identity because of its specifically Gaelic and Highland origin; the "Highlandist" and imperialist foisting of it on the entire country as national costume in the late Georgian through Victorian eras; distorted views of Scottish people promulgated by Lauder and other tartaned entertainers of a century ago; an academic view of tartary and Lowland kailyard literature as two halves of a low-brow, romanticising vulgarity (reinforced in recent decades by the "Tartan Army" fandom of the Scotland national football team reinvigorating a working-class attachment to kilts and tartan); and historically inaccurate portrayal of Scotland by tartan-heavy Hollywood productions like Brigadoon (1954) and Braveheart (1995).[780] Brancaz (2016) argues that "looking at tartan through the lens of the intelligentsia fails to account for its enduring appeal and resilience. ... [T]he wearing of kilts and tartans at weddings, funerals, and cèilidhs in Scotland has increasingly been interpreted as a form of cultural reappropriation."[781]
In 2006, the British Ministry of Defence sparked controversy when it allowed foreign woollen mills to bid for the government contracts to provide the tartans used by the Scottish troops (newly amalgamated as battalions into the Royal Regiment of Scotland), and lowered the formerly very high standards for the cloth.[213]
Following a bill submitted in the Scottish Parliament in February 2007,[782] Scotland's enterprise minister announced in July 2007 that the National Archives of Scotland would set up a national register of tartans.[783] The announcement stated that "Tartan's importance to Scotland cannot be overestimated. It is deeply embedded in Scottish culture and is an internationally recognised symbol of Scotland."[783] This was later reiterated in 2013 through the BBC.[784] The ministry cited an industry report indicating that "the tartan industry is a significant contributor to the overall Scottish economy; and larger ... than suggested by previous industry estimates", and is the basis for some 200 businesses, 4,000 jobs, and £350 million in annual GDP in Scotland.[783] The bill passed in October 2008, and the Scottish Register of Tartans launched in February 2009.[782]
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The Observer reported in 2010 that tartan clothing had become more popular than ever before, crossing subcultural, social-class, and age-group lines, and showing in that year a 540% sales increase in Britain from only two years earlier.[785] Around the same time, there began a resurgence in tartan kilt wearing among Scottish young people "as a mark of a vibrant, modern Scotland".[786][787][788][789] This has interrupted a generations-long trend of native Scottish disaffection toward tartan as stereotyping kitsch.[790][791] An online survey by BBC in 2012 found that 52% of respondents strongly or very strongly disagreed with the premise "Walter Scott's re-branding of all Scots as tartan-wearing Highlanders has been a hindrance to Scotland's cultural development", and only a third agreed.[792] Tartan in mainstream, international fashion experienced another resurgence starting in 2019.[793]
Contemporary Scottish nationalism has been said to be "fed, in part, by tartan and Jacobite nostalgia".[794] After avoidance of tartan since the 1970s (especially by Scottish liberals),[795] the cloth has been politicised again as a nationalist symbol (as it was in the early 18th century), especially during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and in the Scottish National Party's 2015 campaign.[788] (Perhaps owing to this messaging shift, the VisitScotland agency around the same time changed its tourism advertising to minimise, though not eliminate, tartan imagery.)[796] Murray Pittock (2002) writes that the neo-Jacobitism is "both irritating kitsch and a language of identity" for modern Scots.[797] After several decades of intellectual hostility toward tartan (e.g. in Tom Nairn's 1977 The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism, and Hugh Trevor-Roper's posthumous 2008 The Invention of Scotland), an "academic re-assessment of tartan" began in the early 21st century, relying on a wider range of early and modern source material,[798] in historiographical, multidisciplinary edited volumes including Scottish History: The Power of the Past (eds. Edward J. Cowan and Richard J. Finlay, 2002) and From Tartan to Tartany (ed. Ian Brown, 2010).
Major commercial weavers (tartan mills) of traditional tartan cloth that are operating today include Lochcarron of Scotland[799][800] in Lochcarron and Selkirk; Ingles Buchan in Glasgow;[387][800] House of Edgar (also a Highland dress vendor, and a subsidiary of Macnaughton Holdings) in Perth;[387] Johnstons of Elgin (also a wool clothing maker),[387] Strathmore Woollen in Forfar,[387] and D. C. Dalgliesh in Selkirk,[105] all three of which are now part of the Edinburgh-based Scotweb, under the trade name Clan;[801] Prickly Thistle (also a women's clothing maker) in Evanton and Edinburgh;[802] The Tartan Weaving Mill (also a weaving museum, and a subsidiary of Gold Brothers) in Edinburgh;[803] Andrew Elliot Ltd in Selkirk; Stevens & Graham (specialising mostly in tartan rugs and carpet) in Rutherglen; Marton Mills in West Yorkshire, England; Cambrian Woollen Mill, in Powys, Wales; West Coast Woollen Mills in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada;[804] GK Textiles in Port Moody, BC (formerly Fraser & Kirkbright, Vancouver);[805] and Pendleton Woolen Mills in Portland, Oregon, US.[204] The modern trade in wool tartan fabric has three principal markets: Highland dress, high fashion (with significant business from France and Italy), and furnishing.[806][19]
Popular tartans (including for kilts and other Highland dress, as well as for school uniforms) have increasingly been manufactured, primarily in the UK, in poly-viscose (PV),[807] a blend of the artificial materials polyester and viscose (rayon), typically in a 65% polyester to 35% viscose ratio.[808][809] PV is promoted as washable, durable, crease-resistant but heat-settable for permanent pleating, shrinkage-resistant, stain-resistant, colour-fast, low-pilling, hypoallergenic, not attractive to clothes moths, more "breatheable" than polyester (thus good for athletics), lower cost than wool, and lighter weight than wool, but said to have a wool-like texture.[810][811][812][813][814] It also does not rely on animal industry, so it appeals to vegans.[810][811] Large-scale global manufacturers of tartan-patterned cloth in a variety of cotton, polyester, viscose, nylon, etc., materials and blends include Başkan Tekstil in Istanbul and Bursa, Turkey; and Jeen Wei Enterprises in Taichung, Taiwan; while a leading maker of tartan ribbon is Satab in Saint-Just-Malmont, France.[815] Tartan designs have long been produced in low-cost cotton in large quantities in China.[804]
Carol Craig (2003) writes: "Like it or not, tartan is a very sophisticated branding and marketing tool for Scotland."[816] In a tartan-as-marketing analysis, Paterson (2001) observed that continued internationalisation of tartan manufacture, design, and consumption has diluted the associative "Scottishness" of tartan and its value as a national identifier. He blames this in part on Scottish weavers' failure to adapt to market demands for a wider range of fabric applications, as well as the businesses' own complicity in broadening tartan's perceived cultural identity, e.g. in creating tartans for non-Scottish families, places, and organisations.[817]
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In 1947, the tartan-laden Broadway musical Brigadoon (followed by a film version in 1954 and a television adaptation in 1966) renewed an excessively romanticised notion of the Highlands and Highland dress. A critical review called it a "whimsical dream-world" that was "overloaded with Hollywood-Scottish trappings".[818] (The production is generally not well received by actual Scots.)[819][820]
Tartan suits were popular in the mod subculture of Great Britain of the early to mid-1960s and its late 1970s revival.
Since the 1970s, the fandom of the Scotland men's national football (soccer) team have been collectively referred to by the nickname "Tartan Army", with fans often sporting tartan clothing (including kilts) at matches.
Popular in the mid-1970s, Scottish teeny-bopper band the Bay City Rollers were described by the British Hit Singles & Albums reference book as "tartan teen sensations from Edinburgh".[821]
Tartan became a common element of punk subculture starting in the late 1970s. Punk music was a way for youth in the British Isles to voice their discontent with the ruling class and with modern society. The unorthodox use of tartan (especially the royal Stewart), which had long been associated with authority and gentility, was then seen as an expression of that discontent. In this way, tartan – worn unconventionally – became an anti-establishment symbol. This was entirely on purpose according to Vivienne Westwood, a designer deeply involved in early punk fashion;[753][822] the idea was "to seize the very fabric of the Establishment in order to reverse its meaning and perhaps to challenge society's design."[823] American punks often wore tartan skirts, a "subversion" of the Catholic school-girl uniform, and kilts have also been worn in the punk scene since the late 1970s, especially in the UK.[789] Baggy tartan pants later proved popular among pop-punks and skate punks, and tartan-lined jackets among ska punks. From the late 1990s, kilts (mostly modernised "utility kilts" but sometimes traditional ones) have become relatively popular even in North American post-punk subculture (e.g. the goth–industrial, emo, and steampunk scenes), though often in black rather than tartan.
After the 1970s, Westwood, who continued to work extenstively with tartan, was joined by other big-name couturiers. These included Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley, whose designs promoted tartan as a mainstream modern clothing option "with traditional grace and style" for both women and men;[799][823] Stephen Sprouse,[823] credited with a 1980s combination of "uptown sophistication in clothing with a downtown punk and pop sensibility";[824] and later Alexander McQueen,[825] who was "consciously repoliticising the cloth".[307] Others have included Jean Paul Gaultier, Tommy Hilfiger (who made tartan central to his fall 2000 collection), Christian Lacroix, Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, and Gianfranco Ferré.[826][823] A tartan outfit designed by Westwood featured on a commemorative UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in 2012 celebrating "Great British Fashion".[827]
Tartan/plaid flannel shirts, emblematic of the working class, re-entered mainstream fashion through a series of subcultural adoptions, originating primarily in the western United States. First, the style became a staple of cholo style in and around Los Angeles, from the 1970s. From there, the style later became adopted by hip hop fashion in the 1990s, especially the West Coast hip hop lifestyle.[828] Tartan flannel shirts also became quintessentially part of (and androgynous within) the grunge scene (starting in Seattle) of the late 1980s to 2000s.[829] There was fashion cross-pollination between these youth-culture movements,[830] and the fashion industry has found this confluence very marketable.[831]
A resurgence of interest in tartan and kilts (and even Scottish tourism)[820][832] has been generated in recent times by major Hollywood productions[833] like the Highlander franchise (1986–2007),[834][833] Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994),[835] Braveheart (1995),[836][837][838] Rob Roy (1995),[836][838][839] Brave (2012),[840] and the television series Outlander (2014–, with a follow-on travelogue documentary series, Men in Kilts).[841] Many of these featured custom-designed tartans.[834][842]
Tartan clothing has appeared frequently in Doctor Who. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) wore a Wallace tartan scarf on Terror of the Zygons,[843] and his robot-dog companion K9 had a tartan collar.[842] The Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) had a signature patchwork frock coat that included segments in three different tartans, and also typically wore a tartan waistcoat in a fourth sett under it.[844] The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) wore a crimson and black tartan scarf on Time and the Rani. Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), the companion of the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), wore a Campbell tartan dress on "The Name of the Doctor" and a Wallace skirt on "The Time of the Doctor" and "Deep Breath".[845] Annabel Scholey as Claire Brown, in the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) serial Flux, wears a 1960s-style muted tartan dress.[846] The Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) wore a brown tartan suit in the 60th anniversary specials.[847]
One of the most popular tartans is the royal Stewart, ostensibly the personal tartan of the British monarch, since George IV declared it his own (though it was probably designed by the Sobieski Stuarts,[688] albeit based on mid-18th-century pattern called "Prince Charles Edward Stuart").[111][63] The "royal" sett was first published in 1831 in the book The Scottish Gaël by James Logan. In addition to its use in clothing, such as skirts and scarves, royal Stewart tartan has also appeared on biscuit tins for Scottish shortbread,[848] and it has also long been favoured by the British punk scene.
Another tartan in very common use by the general public is Black Watch (also known as old Campbell, Grant hunting, and Government).[127] This tartan, a dark variant (and ancestor) of the main Clan Campbell tartan, has long been used by military units in the British Army and other Commonwealth forces.
Early manufacturer Wilsons of Bannockburn made many "fashion", "fancy", or "national" tartans with catalogue numbers or fanciful names, without any association with particular families, districts, or organisations; two popular ones still in use are both usually called "Caledonia". Wilsons No. 3 is found in their 1819 Key Pattern Book and is comparatively simple,[849] while No. 144 is more complex, though of a similar colour scheme, and seems to date to the late 18th century.[850] (The numbering suggests the other does as well.) Some other tartans in this "Caledonia" group were later claimed by clans; e.g. Caledonia No. 43 or "Kidd" became one of the MacPherson tartans.[851][849]
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In the general fashion industry, various patterns are technically tartan but are not treated as tartans in the clan or district sense. The very basic red-and-black Rob Roy or Robert Roy MacGregor pattern, the oldest of the Clan Gregor setts (though named after Rob Roy in the Victorian period),[852] is also in broad use (often with changed colours) as one of the most common patterns used in flannel cloth for clothing and bedding; in the US, it is often called "buffalo plaid",[853] a term of uncertain derivation.[854] When the Rob Roy sett is changed to a white ground with any other colour this forms the most common gingham cloth style. Gingham is often given a wider setting, to form a lattice appearance (sometimes called "windowpane plaid" or "windowpane check").[855] When that pattern is given one or more additional over-check colours, the result is the pattern known as tattersall.[855]
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In addition to clan tartans, many tartan patterns have been developed for individuals, families, districts and towns, institutions, corporations, and events.[1] They have even been created for particular religious and ethnic groups,[co] and for sociological groups like the LGBT community.[787][861] Tartan has had a long history with the military, and today some military units – particularly those within the Commonwealth – have tartan dress uniforms.[862]
Many districts, cities, and towns in Scotland have their own tartans, mostly dating to the 20th century (though some few district tartans are quite old),[cp] and not always official; many were just created for marketing to tourists,[863] and some are copyrighted works tied to specific vendors.[864] They are intended primarily for those to whom a clan tartan does not seem to apply . At least two local government councils in Scotland have official tartans.[865]
In addition to the traditional district and modern geographic tartans of Scotland, new designs have been created for places in other countries. Only some regional tartans are officially recognised by the government bodies of the places the designs represent.
The pan-Celticism movement has inspired the creation of "national" (in the sense of Celtic nations) and sometimes regional tartans "to emphasise the ... bonds with other Celtic countries"[868] outside of Scotland; none of these appear to have any official recognition. There are tartans of Cornwall, long a part of Devonshire in England (the designs date from 1963 to the 1980s);[cq] Wales (from 1967 onward[cr] – sometimes with false claims of antiquity by marketers);[879] the Isle of Man (from 1946, many by D. G. Teall of the Scottish Tartans Society, and several asymmetric);[cs] Brittany in France (from 2002);[ct] Galicia in Spain (from 1990);[cu] and especially Ireland (from 1956).
After the discovery of the "Dungiven tartan" and its marketing as a district tartan for Ulster, Scottish weavers (and in two cases English, and in another American) decided to tap an Irish and especially Irish-American market by introducing a profusion of national, province, and county tartans for Ireland and Northern Ireland, generally based on established Scottish tartans with some colour changes.[19][204] These geographical tartans, which (aside from the Dungiven/Ulster reconstruction of 1956) date to 1970 and later,[208] do not have any official recognition, and are purely a product of the industry.[19][202] One weaver even introduced a competing set of Irish national and county tartans in 1996, different from the previous offerings.[202] "The influence of native Irish people, either as suppliers or consumers of Irish tartans, would appear to be minimal."[19]
Further afield, all but two Canadian provinces and territories have official tartans, with the first dating from 1956. Neither Quebec nor Nunavut, Canada's newest territory, have formally adopted patterns. Alberta, meanwhile, has two official tartans, including a dress one. All but Quebec's were registered with the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland.[896] Canada has an official national tartan that was originally designed to commemorate the introduction of its new maple leaf flag, and was made an official national emblem in 2011.[867] Various Canadian regions (like Labrador and Cape Breton Island), counties, municipalities, and institutions also have official tartans.[cv]
Tartans have been created for Australia; its capital city, Canberra; each of its states; and some of its local government areas; but only some of those tartans have been officially adopted or recognised by the relevant governments in Australia. US states have official tartans, with the first dating from 1988.
A tartan is sometimes differentiated from another with the same name by a label: hunting, mourning, dress, or dance. The first three of these ideas are the result of Victorian fondness for dress etiquette and show[899] (and weaver marketing);[66] the last is more recent.
Hunting tartans tend to be made up of subdued colours, such as dark blues, greens, and browns.[900] Although there is some evidence of early tartans with camouflage colours going back to the 16th century, hunting tartans, despite the name, have very little to do with actual hunting.[12]
Mourning tartans, though quite rare, are associated with death and funerals. They are usually designed using combinations of black and white, or by replacing bright colours such as reds and yellows in a traditional tartan with black, white, or grey.[901]
Dress tartans are usually special tartans for formal-dress occasions[902] (e.g. dress Stewart[903] is distinct from both the main royal Stewart tartan and the hunting Stewart,[904] among several other tartans attributed to Stewart/Stuart). In a few cases, a dress tartan is simply the main tartan of the clan.[cw] Dress tartans that do differ from main clan tartans are sometimes entirely different (e.g. MacMillan[36] and MacMillan dress[909] are unrelated designs), while in most cases they are based on the main tartan but with colour differences (e.g. Stewart). Some dress tartans are very modern,[82][611] but some date back to the era of the Vestiarium Scoticum.[910]
Dance tartans, intended for Highland dance outfits, for either sex, are inspired (like most dress tartans before them) by the arisaid (earasaid tartans thought to have been worn by Highland women in the 17th and 18th centuries, which often featured white as a major colour, as do typical dance tartans today (most or all of which date to the 20th century or later). Some dance tartans are named "arisaid" rather than "dance", e.g. Fraser arisaid.[911][cx]
There has been some confusion between dress and dance tartans, especially since the idea of the latter developed from the former.[cy] Most dress tartans, including some of the oldest, also have white in them, and have been used for dance competition in lieu of a dance-specific tartan, so are easy to mistake for dance tartans, which almost invariably have white in them.[914][cz]
A large proportion of non-clan tartans in all of the modern tartan databases have always been family tartans, promulgated mostly from the late 20th century for family names that are not clans or listed as septs of clans. These are usually Scottish surnames, but the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) database increasingly includes new family tartans for names that are not Scottish or even British. Most family tartans have no copyright claim, since they are intended for use by anyone with the surname or an extended-family connection. The SRT classifies them together with clan tartans in a "clan/family" category if they have history that pre-dates SRT or if they are newer and are approved by a legally recognized clan chief or family head, but in a "name" category if they are newer and lack such imprimatur.
A few non-clan family tartans have an older pedigree. The best known is Balmoral tartan, reserved for the British royal family and personal pipers thereof, since its creation by Prince Albert c. 1852.[da] Some clans recognise tartans for specific family branches and septs that are not themselves generally regarded as clans. For example, Clan Robertson/Donnachaidh/Duncan acknowledges separate, established tartans (some of them quite old) for Inches, MacGlashan, MacInroy, MacLagan, MacPhee, MacWilliam, Reid, and Robinson,[916] and they are all registered in the SRT.
Since the late 1960s, various weavers have marketed (primarily to Irish Americans) some tartans with Irish family names, without any involvement by family members.[204] There had also been a legend that the rare Clans Originaux (1880) contained Irish family tartans, but this was finally disproven in 2003.[19][db] There is one case of a formal Irish clan/family tartan, however: The Clan Cian Society commissioned a tartan for Cian of Ely, and registered it with the Chief Herald of Ireland in 1983.[19][204] (Even this has an Irish-American connection, as the chief resided in California, and the society is US-headquartered.)[918] Similarly, a commercial operation in Cardiff named Wales Tartan Centre (supplied by Cambrian Woollen Mill) has since the early 2000s promoted a long series of tartans named for common or prominent Welsh family names; they are unusual in often having odd-numbered thread counts, and having a different warp and weft (producing rectangular rather than square patterns), probably to distinguish them from the Scottish style.[879][919]
For the much narrower sense of family, the SRT registers also as "name" tartans those that are created by individuals for only themselves and their immediate-family members, often for weddings; these usually have a copyright claim. One of the earliest tartans named for a specific person[dc] is the "Janet Wilson sett", entered into the late 1770s records of Wilsons of Bannockburn and believed to refer to the company founder's wife or daughter-in-law, though made as one of their publicly available patterns.[305][dd]
Numerous Scottish brands use tartan, and some have unique tartans. Various not-for-profit organisations also have corporate tartans. Probably the earliest case was that of the Ancient Caledonian Society of London (founded in 1786 and defunct since 1837), which used what is believed to have been a consistent tartan[922] for its members' frock coats (which, unusually, featured brocade woven into the tartan, of Jacobite white roses – it may be what 1767 advertisements called "flowered tartan"); only one known example of the coat survives.[343][923]
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As an example of a modern commercial tartan, Irn-Bru (introduced in 1901), the best-selling soft drink in Scotland,[924] has its own tartan.[925] Scottish regional airline Loganair uses tartan livery, including on the tails of its planes, and has two registered corporate tartans.[926] "Racing Stewart"[927] is a pattern created in 1995 for the Jackie Stewart Formula One car-racing team.[928]
The "corporate" category is one of the fastest-growing in the official Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) database, with a large number of Scottish (and American and other) companies and societies registering organisational tartans. These are generally protected by copyright and sometimes trademark law. These tartans vary in purpose from general corporate livery, to special event tartans, to tartans for fictional characters.
Two examples of the latter are Sanrio's 2004 creation of a predominantly pink tartan for Hello Kitty;[91] and the 2011 creation by Disney/Pixar of the DunBroch tartan for the family of the main character, Mérida, of the animated Highland fantasy/adventure film Brave.[929]
An early example of a tartan created by and for the fashion industry, and surely the most famous, is "Burberry check". It was introduced in the 1920s for the lining of trench coats made by Burberry of London, but has been used for all manner of clothing and accessories since 1967[930] (with another major marketing push in 2001) and is emblematic of the company and its upscale product line.[931]
A fast-growing category in the SRT is that of "fashion" tartans, created by companies and individual designers simply for aesthetic reasons, without any association with a particular clan, family, region, etc. Like organisational tartans, most of these have a copyright claim attached to them.
A prominent example: In 2017, Scottish fashion designer Charles Jeffrey designed a signature tartan for his Loverboy label, registering it in the SRT.[125]
Manufacture and use of tartan (at least in the Scottish context) is regulated, formally and informally, in three ways: registration (recording of a tartan and its association, if any, with a particular family, organisation, person, event, etc.); legal protection of a tartan as intellectual property (trademark, copyright); and etiquette (socio-cultural norms regarding the use of tartan and Highland dress).
The naming and registration of "official" clan tartans began in 1815, when the Highland Society of London solicited clan tartans from clan chiefs.
Following recognition by a clan chief of a tartan as a clan tartan, the chief was formerly able to petition the Lord Lyon King of Arms, the Scottish heraldic authority, to register it as a formal clan tartan.[de] Once approved by the Lord Lyon, after recommendation by the Advisory Committee on Tartan, the clan tartan was then recorded in the Lyon Court Books.[293] However, leading up to the launch of the Scottish Register of Tartans in 2009 , the office of the Lord Lyon stopped providing this tartan-recording process (though its statutory authority was not changed by the Tartans Bill).
Modern-day tartans can be created and registered by anyone, with the Scottish Register of Tartans. Modern registered tartans include ones for Scottish and other districts, cities, and towns; for Irish counties (devised since the 1990s)[105] and families (for example, the surname Fitzpatrick has two registered tartans[932]); for organisations and companies; and even for specific events or individuals. Tartans are also being created in record numbers among the Scottish diaspora in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., especially for places, military divisions, pipe bands, and individuals and their immediate families.
Until the late 20th century, instead of a central official tartan registry, independent organisations located in Scotland, Canada, and the United States documented and recorded tartans.[933] In 1963, an organisation called the Scottish Tartans Society (now defunct, and originally named Scottish Tartans Information Centre)[590] was created to record and preserve every known tartan design.[934] The society's Register of All Publicly Known Tartans (RAPKT) contained about 2,700 different designs of tartan.[935] Registration of new designs was not free of charge. The society, however, ran into financial troubles in 2000, and folded.[936][387]
Former members of that society formed two new Scotland-based entities – the Scottish Tartans Authority (STA, 1996 – before STS closed) and the Scottish Tartans World Register (STWR, 2000 – the trade name of a private company, Tartan Registration Ltd).[387] Both of these organisations initially based their databases on the RAPKT. STA's database, the International Tartan Index (ITI) consisted of about 3,500 different tartans (with over 7,000, counting variants) as of 2004.[935] The online ITI was later rebranded The Tartan Ferret. STWR's self-titled Scottish Tartans World Register database was made up of about 3,000 different designs as of 2004.[935] Both organisations were registered as Scottish charities and recorded new tartans (free in the case of STA and for a fee in the case of STWR) on request.[937][938]
In the interim, a jointly Scotland- and US-based organisation, International Association of Tartan Studies and Tartan Educational & Cultural Association (IATS/TECA) emerged in 1984[387] and published its own TartanArt database in the early 1990s as Microsoft Windows software which was much used in the North American kilt-making trade. IATS/TECA was absorbed by STA by 2005.[387]
The Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) is Scotland's official tartan register, and was established in 2009.[939] SRT is maintained and administered by the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), a statutory body based in Edinburgh.[940] The aim of the register is to provide a definitive and accessible resource to promote and preserve tartans. It is also intended to be the definitive source for the registration of new tartans (if they pass criteria for inclusion and a registration fee is paid). The database itself – also named simply Scottish Register of Tartans, and sometimes called TartanRegister from its domain name – is made up of the pre-existing registers of STA and STWR as they were at the time of SRT's launch (preserving the STA's and STWR's registration numbers, dates, and other details in the SRT data), plus new registrations from 5 February 2009 onward. On the register's website, users can register new tartans, search for existing tartans and request their thread counts, and receive notifications of newly registered tartans.[939][941]
STWR became defunct some time after 2008. STA later closed the ITI/Tartan Ferret to new registrations, and in late 2022 removed the search feature from the STA website (pending a site redesign), deferring to the Scottish Register of Tartans, which now appears to be the only operating tartan registry. STA continues offline work on the ITI database, correcting errors, importing new SRT additions, and recording historical patterns newly discovered in museum holdings, etc.
Some modern tartans are protected by trademark law, and the trademark proprietor can, in certain circumstances, prevent others from selling that tartan.[127] An example is the "Burberry check" of the English fashion house, an instantly recognisable tartan that is very well known around the world.[942][df]
Unlike trademark registration and copyright registration, the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) and its authorising Tartans Bill do not create any new or enhanced intellectual property rights through the act of registration (nor provide any enforcement mechanism other than removal of infringing entries from the registry).[946]
SRT, however, permits registrants optionally to assert and record copyright and/or trademark claims over their new tartans, for designs that are eligible for such protection under other established law[947] (such as the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; and the Scotland Act 1998, which took over copyright and trademark registration and enforcement in Scotland)[948] and lists such tartans as restricted. An SRT registration "provides evidence of the existence and date of [the] design",[949] which helps establish the copyright date under the Berne Copyright Convention. Such legal protections apply only to comparatively recently created tartans; old clan, regimental, and district tartans are outside the protection periods of such intellectual property laws.[43]
SRT also permits the listing of intended use and manufacture restriction preferences, but has no enforcement capability,[950] and also includes a statement that "No other rights can be conferred."[949] British tartan weavers, such as Lochcarron and D. C. Dalgliesh, generally will not produce material in an SRT "restricted" tartan without written evidence of permission from the copyright/trademark claimant. In additional furtherance of intellectual property concerns, the SRT also refuses to register a new tartan that is confusingly similar to any existing one (as determined by an SRT review process).[951]
The application of copyright law to tartans is not well tested. The leading British legal case on textile copyright, concerned with designs printed on fabric, is Designer Guild Ltd v Russell Williams (Textiles) Ltd (2000), finding for fairly broad copyright protection in textile works that involve creative originality.[952] In 2008, two tartan pattern copyright holders, Rosemary Nicolson Samios and weaver Lochcarron of Scotland, took legal action for infringement of an Isle of Skye district sett (designed 1993) and the Princess Diana Memorial sett (designed 1997), respectively, against the Gold Brothers firm of Surinder, Galab, Malap, and Dildar Singh, who operate dozens of stores in Scotland and online that sell primarily Chinese-made tartan objects or "tartan-tat", including cheap Highland-dress outfits, for the tourist market.[864] The Isle of Skye tartan was considerably profitable for Samios, after the pattern was popularised by Queen Elizabeth II wearing it in 1999. The Princess Diana sett was designed by Alistair Buchan of Lochcanrron and of the Scottish Tartans Authority as a charity fundraiser. A British court on 2 July 2008 issued an interim interdict (preliminary injunction) against Gold Brothers' sale of Isle of Skye goods, after a police search found hundreds of metres of the pattern in Chinese-made cloth in the company's warehouse.[864][953][954][955] Both cases may have been settled out-of-court because published news regarding them ceases in 2008. A more recent case, Abraham Moon & Sons Ltd v. Thornber & Others (2012), actually involved tartan. It held that the textual ticket stamp (a detailed set of weaving instructions, i.e. a thread count with additional information on precise colours, etc.) used to produce a tartan designed in-house by the claimant had been infringed, was protected as a literary work, and also constituted a "recording" of the graphical work of the tartan and thus was independently protected as a work of artistic craftsmanship.[43][956] As of 2020,[update] the decision was being appealed, as it conflicted with previous caselaw, e.g. Hensher v Restawile (1976), holding such instructions to be uncopyrightable.[957][43]
While tartan arguably could be classified as a form of intangible cultural heritage,[958] and its value to identifying Scottish products both in Scotland and internationally has been recognised and exploited for a long time,[928] tartan is not protected by either geographical indication (protected designation of origin) law, nor sui generis legislation specific to that kind of product.[959] Harris tweed, another textile associated more narrowly with Scotland, does have such protection. In 1998, Keith Lumsden, research officer of the Scottish Tartans Society, proposed that the word tartan be prohibited for use to market a textile, unless the design was accepted in an official governmental tartan registry (which did not then exist).[928] When the Scottish Parliament finally authorised the Scottish Register of Tartans in 2008, it did not include anything like this sort of trade protection. According to Michael B. Paterson (2001): "No mechanism exists to protect [traditional Scottish] tartan from 'misuse' by interests having nothing to do with Scotland or Scotland's interests", though the tartan registries "play an important, if weak, role in asserting Scotland's cultural rights in relation to tartan."[960]
Since the Victorian era, authorities on tartan have claimed that there is an etiquette to wearing tartan, specifically tartan attributed to clans or families. In the same line of opinion, some tartans attributed to the British royal family have been claimed to be "off limits" to non-royalty.[961][962] Even so, there are no laws or universally accepted rules on who can or cannot wear a particular tartan. The concept of the entitlement to certain tartans has led to the term universal tartan, or free tartan, which describes tartan which can be worn by anyone. Traditional examples of such are the Black Watch, Caledonia, hunting Stewart, and Jacobite tartans, shepherds' check, and district tartans.[963][787][964] The published marketing of tartans for simple fashion purposes without any association to a place or body dates back to at least 1745,[484] and much of Wilsons' output through the 19th century consisted of "fancy" patterns for the general public.[965] Some recently created designs intended for everyone (though some are exclusive to particular weavers or Highland dress outfitters) have names including Braveheart, Clansman, European Union, Highlander, Independence, Pride of Scotland, Rainbow, Scotland 2000, Scotland the Brave, Scottish National, Scottish Parliament, Spirit of Scotland, Stone of Destiny, and Twenty First Century.[966]
Books on Scottish clans list such rules and guidelines.[127] One such opinion is that people not bearing a clan surname, or surname claimed as a sept of a clan, should not wear the tartan of their mother's clan.[967] This opinion is reinforced by the fact that in the Scottish clan system, the Lord Lyon states that membership to a clan technically passes through the surname. This means that children who bear their father's surname belong to the father's clan (if any), and that children who bear their mother's surname (her maiden name) belong to their mother's clan (if any).[968] Also, the Lord Lyon states that a clan tartan should only be worn by those who profess allegiance to that clan's chief.[969]
Some clan societies even claim that certain tartans are the personal property of a chief or chieftain, and in some cases they allow or deny their clansfolk "permission" to wear that tartan.[dg] According to the Scottish Tartans Authority – which is an establishment of the Scottish tartan industry – the Balmoral tartan should not be worn by anyone who is not part of the British royal family. Even so, some weavers outside of the United Kingdom ignore the "longstanding convention" of the British royal family's "right" to this tartan. The society also claims that non-royals who wear this tartan are treated with "great disdain" by the Scottish tartan industry.[971][dh]
Generally, a more liberal attitude had been taken by those in the business of selling tartan, holding that anyone may wear any tartan they like. Under the liberal view, claimed "rules" are mere conventions (some of which are recent creations), with different levels of importance depending on the symbolic meaning of the tartan on some particular occasion.
The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs has also taken a fairly flexible position (organisationally; some specific individual chiefs may have a narrower or looser take, and not all chiefs are members). Aside from opposing the creation of a new tartan using a clan's name without the chief's permission, their website states:[974]
There are no strict rules on who has the right to wear a particular tartan. People normally wear only the tartan (if any) of their surname, or a "district tartan" connected with where they live or where their family come from. Wearing a particular clan tartan indicates that the wearer bears an allegiance to the chief of that clan.
Some Highland dress historians have taken a dim view of regulatory intents and proclamations with regard to tartans; Scottish National Portrait Gallery curator A. E. Haswell Miller wrote that "to claim special entitlement to a tartan in the same manner as heraldic arms is certainly absurd", because evidence suggests that the idea was just invented by writers of the late 18th to mid-19th centuries.[975] Sir Thomas Dick Lauder expressed similar views as far back as 1829, right in the middle of the "clan tartanry" rush, dismissing both the then-new adoption of "official" clan tartans and attempts by clans to claim regimental ones.[549]
While tartan has been most closely associated with Scotland, and dating back to the Roman period was perhaps associated with Northwestern Europe in general, it is likely that the idea of using patterns of rectangles and lines has independently occurred many times, in any cultures with weaving.[976] Basic tartan "is almost as primitive a weave as it is possible to make ... probably the earliest form of patterened fabric anywhere."[3] Surviving pre-modern historical examples seem sparse, however.
Modern tartan-style cloth in a wide variety of materials and patterns from simple to complex is available and used today around the world, often simply as a style of cloth and without any association with Scotland.
Among the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania, the shúkà is a cotton blanket-like garment (what Scots would call a plaid) worn as a wrap, and very commonly in a tartan pattern, though sometimes linearly striped or of one colour.[977] Shúkà are predominantly red, though sometimes seen in blue and other colours.
Shúkà were originally of painted (typically red) leather, but Maasai have had access to plain-weave cotton fabric for some time, imported to the region by Americans since the 1860s.[977] Joseph Thomas Last, a British missionary, in 1883 described the Maasai as particularly fond of red and white cloth, to be worn by higher-status men (though he did not mention tartan in particular);[978] a 1903 report also had them typically wearing red blanket-like garments, after a time of favouring blue.[977] The Maasai were loosely allied with the British, 1895–1904,[979] and the latter made heavy use of Scottish regiments in African conflicts, bringing tartan with them. However, "Guinea cloth" (mostly produced in India), sometimes red and blue checked, was a common commodity in 18th-century western Africa, pre-dating British West Africa; whether it relates at all to shúkà is unknown.[980] Shúkà patterns usually lack the thin black lines common in Scottish tartans.
A nomadic cattle-pastoralist culture, without their own weaving tradition, the Maasai have been described as unusually culturally conservative and resistant to modernisation.[981] Nevertheless, they have always engaged in trade to get goods they do not make themselves,[978] and have made local traditional use of modern materials.[982] The Maasai approach has been to resist yet assimilate colonial and post-colonial influences.[983]
Although there is evidence of tartan usage among the Maasai to at least the period 1906–1918, when Walther Dobbertin photographed a tartan shúkà in what was then German East Africa, the current bright tartan and striped style of shúkà appears to have been adopted primarily in the 1960s[980][984] (partly in response to national-level clothing modernisation pressure), supplanting leather but keeping the same form-factor.[983] The shift in outward form without affecting function led one writer to quip that Maasai dress "has undergone dramatic changes while not changing at all".[985] Tartan-patterned cloth is not typically used for other Maasai garments besides shúkà.
The shúkà has become so emblematic of the Maasai that there is some discussion (driven by the Maasai themselves) at the national and regional level about protecting it as a form of cultural property.[986] While it has been claimed that shúkà patterns, at least at one time, conveyed particular meanings,[di] and there historically have long been weaving operations in various African areas,[987] most shúkà today that are not mass-manufactured in Dar es Salaam actually come from China, not Africa.[980]
Tartan is woven in China, both as a traditional fabric and in large commercial quantities for export.[804]
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In Bhutan, traditional men's robes (gho)[988] and knee-stockings (omso, similar to argyle socks),[989] and women's dresses (kira)[990] are traditional national costume styles that are largely mandatory for public dress since 1963.[991][dj] Tartan (generally called mathra or, after the district of its primary production, Bumthang mathra,[993][dk] among other names for specific patterns) is among the many common textile styles for these garments, some much more elaborate (generally called yathra)[995] than tartan. The tartan cloths are woven traditionally in yak and sheep wool, but today also in cotton and raw silk.[996]
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Mathra is woven primarily with a red ground. Some specific tartan/plaid styles of Bhutan are: broad-checked thra bom; narrow-checked thra charuru; sethra ('golden pattern'), an orange or rust ground with yellow and sometimes black checks (with black, it is more specifically called sethra dokhana, and without, dalapgi sethra); red, blue, and black patterns on a white ground, in at least four varieties called pangtsi (specifically red and black on white),[997] Decheling kamtham, and other names;[998] and another style is named burai mathra.[999] Some of these fabrics feature supplementary weft decorative patterns (flowers, etc.) added to the tartan, with an embroidered or brocaded appearance, generally called pesar ('new pattern'); one such style is more specifically called sethra metho chen, the yellow-orange pattern with flowers added. There are also patterns of simple linear stripes that do not cross each other (generally called adha[ng] mathra or aikapur), with various names for specific styles.[1000]
Madras is a patterened, light-weight, breatheable, cotton cloth named for the Madras (now Chennai) area of India.[1001] Traditional madras is hand-woven from lumpy, carded-cotton thread, and coloured with natural dyes which may bleed together upon washing to create a more muted pattern than typical tartan, as well as a rougher texture.[1002] Madras also has a "softer" look because it typically lacks the black lines found in most Scottish tartans. Madras cloth dates to at least the 16th century, produced in a variety of patterns, including religious designs and floral prints.[1002] It is unclear if tartan patterns were among the original designs, though they became very popular later. Weaving, primarily for export, in Madras/Chennai became a large-scale commercial enterprise after the British East India Company came to control the area in the mid-17th century.[1003] Major production of this style of cloth also took place in Cambay State (present-day Gujarat).[1004]
Madras, ideal for warm-weather wear, became popular in the Philippines (where it is known as cambaya)[1004] and the Caribbean;[1002] mainly in undyed form, it was also exported to Europe.[1002] Tartan madras reached America by 1718, and appeared in the 1897 Sears catalogue.[1002] It was popular in the United States in the 1930s and again in the 1960s, often associated with preppy style.[1002] Substantial export of the cloth to South Africa began in 1958.[1002]
Modern madras cloth is commonly in tartan patterns, but also simply striped (seersucker). Unlike Scottish-style tartan, madras is not woven in 2/2 twill pattern, but is a muslin of plain weave;[1002] it thus, when viewed up close, features a "pepper and salt" colour mixture where colours cross[7] (a dot matrix, technically), not staggered diagonal lines . It also usually lacks black lines.
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In Japan, tartan patterns called kōshi 格子 (also koushi or goushi, literally 'lattice') or kōshijima 格子縞 date back to at least the 18th century,[397] possibly the 17th[1005] in the Edo period (1603–1867), and were popular for kabuki theatrical costuming, which inspired general public use by both sexes, for the kosode (precursor of the kimono), the obi, and other garments.[1006] The name is a reference to the details of shoji room dividers, the grid pattern said to stand for strength, with larger stripes representing more power.[1006]Kōshi range from simple checked patterns to complex multi-colour weaves. Ikat thread-dyeing techniques were sometimes employed before the weaving, such that a colour in the pattern was mottled,[1006] and parts of the design may sometimes have been embroidered, supplementary-woven, or dyed-over for additional highlight or contrast.[1006] Some styles have particular names, such as misuji-kōshi ('three-striped lattice')[1006] and futasuji-kōshi ('forked lattice').[1007] A pattern with larger squares is more generally called ogoshi or with smaller squares kogoshi.[1008]
It is unclear whether there was a Scottish tartan influence on the development of kōshi. The Edo period pre-dates the Perry Expedition of 1853–1854 and its opening of Japan to general Western trade, but mostly post-dates early European contact from 1543 to the closure of Japan to outsiders in 1639 under the sakoku isolationist policy.
Nothing suggests that particular patterns have been associated with specific families or Japanese clans.
Today, kōshijima is the general Japanese word for 'tartan/plaid, checked pattern'.[1009] Tartan is popular in present-day Japan, both for high fashion and for streetwear,[307] as well as school uniforms.[673] Since the 1960s, the Japanese department store chain Isetan has used an emblematic tartan as a marketing tool (e.g. on all its shopping bags); the pattern is based on some MacMillan tartans.[1010] Japan hosted a major museum exhibit about tartan in 2018.[1011]
Tartan-style patterns are common throughout Southeastern Europe.
In northern Eurasia, tartan fabrics are also common to Finnic peoples of Russia and nearby Latvia, Estonia, and Sápmi (Lappland, a cultural region that crosses northern Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway); John Francis Campbell (1862) described native weaving of the Sámi (Lapps) of his era as being hand-loom tartan.[976]
Considerably to the southeast, the Tatars[dl] and Chuvash, Turkic peoples of Tatarstan and Chuvashia, respectively, in the Russian Federation, have worn tartan, striped, and other patterns since at least the 19th century.
Robert Jamieson, writing in 1818 as editor of Edmund Burt's 1727–37 Letters of a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, said that in his era, married women of the north-western provinces of Russia wore tartan plaids "of massy silk, richly varied, with broad cross-bars of gold and silver tissue".[94] This seems quite distinct from Scottish-style construction.
The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), who was influenced by the romantic-Highlands writings of Walter Scott,[1012][1013] posed for one of the most famous paintings in Russia, the 1827 portrait by Orest Kiprensky. Pushkin wears what looks at first like a Scottish-style tartan shoulder plaid, but is more probably a sleeveless "Almaviva" cape/cloak, a style in fashion at the time and known to have been worn by Pushkin.[751]
Tartan was commented on in the Moscow Telegraph in 1826 as being in broad fashion in the city for all sorts of garments (often as a decorative accent).[751] Scottish-style plaids apparently did come into some fashion in Russia as women's wear for a space during the mid-to-late 19th century, a style picked up from stage productions; some 19th century Russian paintings illustrate use of plaids as shawls.[751] Tartan (and plain-striped) shawls were also common among the Volga Germans and Bessarabia Germans in Russia; a mixture of hand-woven (originally as bedclothes and other household goods) and mass-produced in Russia, the shawls became emblematic of the German-from-Russia diaspora in North and South America from the nineteenth century to the mid-20th.[1014][1015]
Around the end of the 19th century, the Russian equivalent of Regency and Victorian British tartanware objects, such as decorative Fedoskino boxes with tartan accents in a style called Shotlandka Шотландка (literally 'Scotlandish'), were produced by companies like the Lukutin Manufactory on the outskirts of Moscow.[1016]
Today, shotlandka or shotlandki шотландки are simply Russian words for 'tartan/plaid' generally.[1017]
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the first Māori king, adopted a particular house tartan with design elements symbolizing his ancestry, such as inner stripes representing migration canoes that first arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand; this tartan was presented by his descendant Tūheitia Paki to Charles III in the former's visit to Buckingham Palace in May 2023.[1018] His following tribes concentrated around Northland have also adopted green tartans.[1019]
The words tartan and plaid have come to be used synonymously, particularly in North America. This usage is incorrect when referring to Scottish tartan
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