In Scotland there is a well understood idea that different regions produced different tartan cloth, often from local dyestuffs, but the Highlands did have access to many imported raw materials from the mid 1500’s well before the craze for tartan happened. Scotland is generally the first place that tartan is identified with by most people and it has become the single most recognisable marker of the region. The most recently found example of an historic tartan from Glen Affric in the Highlands, has been confirmed to between 1500 -1600 is a very recognisable tartan design with multi pattern lines and 4 colours of dyed yarns. The first actual example of a tartan found in Britain is the Falkirk check, a very simple check in natural light and dark wools, dating to around 250AD. These fabrics are remarkable survivors of a past age of very skilled weavers. There are some examples of such cloth dating back over 3000 years found in Urumchi, China with other examples from findings in the historic Salt mines of Halstatt in Austria. Any woven cloth with a regular repeating series of threads of different colours in both the warp and weft would be considered as tartan. Woven cloth exists all over the world, anywhere that had fibre, of any sort, would have created fabric often with stripes, lines, and ultimately checks. Whatever the source it seems that it didn’t necessarily mean a patterned cloth, but more a long lasting or valuable one. There are even thoughts that it might have come from the City of Tyre or even brought in from Central Asia by the Tartars, both somewhat spurious… The word might have come from the Old French tiretaine ( c.1247), meaning either a coarse mixed/union fabric of different warp and weft fibre or indeed a rich cloth, wool is often mentioned but it doesn’t appear that it was universal as linen or cotton was also utilised. the pattern repeats in the same colour order and proportions in every direction from the two pivot points. The majority of such patterns (or setts) are symmetrical i.e. The sequence of the warp colours (long-wise threads) is repeated in same order and size in the weft (cross-wise threads).
Tartan, some common dictionary definitions
There is often a confusion about where tartan came from and what it actually means, ultimately it can be difficult to clear up the misunderstanding but perhaps the following thoughts might help.
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