Tartans have become synonymous with Scotland and Scottish clans and families
in particular. However, tartans were originally a style of cloth intended
to be decorative. They had patterns that were popular within certain districts
of manufacture, they relied on a limited range of colour dyes
and were made of the local coarser type
This has lead to the idea of district
tartans being the original association, between the land, the community
and its cloth. Where there was a strong clan within a district, as was
often the case in the highlands, then visitors from other areas might
well have been recognised as of a clan from their tartan. This must have
been true of visitors from the Western Isles, for instance. It is this
concept of clan tartans
that today predominates, but the use of tartan is yet richer.
When tartan was proscribed by law, the Government or Black Watch pattern
was the only legally one. This was used by the regiments raised within
Scotland, forming the basis of the regimental
By the early 1800s, it was realised that the knowledge of tartans
before the ´45 was being lost and, simultaneously, there was a
romantic movement concerning Scotland's past. This lead to institutional
and individual efforts to preserve tartan designs. Tartans were
reconstructed from portraits, collected on pilgrimages, demanded
from clan chiefs and recovered from weaver's notes.
Tartans became a backdrop. The weaving and tailoring industries were
especially boosted by the visit to Edinburgh of George IV in 1822 and
by Sir Walter Scott's statement, as the visit's manager, "Let every
man wear his tartan". Queen Victoria gave considerable encouragement
thereafter, though this encouraged both fantasy and fact in the study
of tartan. (Some royal tartans
remain the preserve of the House of Windsor or individual titles within
it, just as clan chiefs sometimes have a chief's
The significance of tartan as national dress, worn under various circumstances,
created clan tartans
for every "name", even those that previously had none. These
were often supplemented by hunting
tartans of subdued character and dress tartans
which were brighter.
Further variety was added by fashion, fancy or trade tartans
to fill any niche, including various colours of a single pattern. Dancing Tartans originate from the ARISAID or Dress Tartans. There were even some mourning
In recent years the corporate
tartans have become popular where an institution or company adopts
a tartan design for livery and use in merchandising.
Where no clan tartan exists, families can and have developed
new Family Tartans. Generally which tartan is worn is controlled
by convention there not being a statute for its government. Disputes
as to its use and production rely on the civil law of Copyright,
Design Act and in rare cases Patents/Trademarks.
Manufacturers often offer a given tartan design in a variety of colour effects,
called Modern, Reproduction, Ancient and the like. An ancient and a modern
tartan is often the same pattern and should not be confused when the design is being considered.