Tartan
Tartan, also known, especially in American English, as plaid , is a patterned cloth consisting of crossing horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours, forming repeating symmetrical patterns known as setts. Tartan patterns vary in complexity, from simple two-colour designs to intricate motifs with over twenty hues. Originating in woven wool, tartan is most strongly associated with Scotland, where it has been used for centuries in traditional clothing such as the kilt. Specific tartans are linked to Scottish clans, families, or regions, with patterns and colours derived historically from local natural dyes. Tartans also serve institutional roles, including military uniforms and organisational branding.
Tartan became a symbol of Scottish identity, especially from the 17th century onward, despite a ban under the Dress Act 1746 lasting about two generations following the Jacobite rising of 1745. The 19th-century Highland Revival popularized tartan globally by associating it with Highland dress and the Scottish diaspora. Today, tartan is used worldwide in clothing, accessories, and design, transcending its traditional roots. Modern tartans are registered for organisations, individuals, and commemorative purposes, with thousands of designs in the Scottish Register of Tartans.
While often linked to Scottish heritage, tartans exist in other cultures, such as Africa, East and South Asia, and Eastern Europe. The earliest surviving samples of tartan-style cloth are around 3,000 years old and were discovered in Xinjiang, China.
Etymology and terminology
The English and Scots word tartan is possibly derived from French tiretaine meaning 'linsey-woolsey cloth'. Other hypotheses are that it derives from Scottish Gaelic tarsainn or tarsuinn, meaning 'across' or 'crossing over'; or from French tartarin or tartaryn meaning 'Tartar cloth'. It is unrelated to the superficially similar word tarlatan, which refers to a very open-weave muslin similar to cheesecloth. Tartan is both a mass noun and a count noun.Today, tartan refers to coloured patterns, though originally did not have to be made up of a pattern at all, as it referred to the type of weave; as late as the 1820s, some tartan cloth was described as "plain coloured ... without pattern". Patterned cloth from the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands was called breacan, meaning 'many colours'. Over time, the meanings of tartan and breacan were combined to describe a certain type of pattern on a certain type of cloth.
The pattern of a particular tartan is called its sett. The sett is made up of a series of lines at specific widths which cross at right angles and blend into each other; the longer term setting is occasionally used. Sett can refer to either the minimal visual presentation of the complete tartan pattern or to a textual representation of it.
Today tartan is used more generally to describe the pattern, not limited to textiles, appearing on media such as paper, plastics, packaging, and wall coverings.
In North America, the term plaid is commonly used to refer to tartan. Plaid, derived from the Scottish Gaelic plaide meaning 'blanket', was first used of any rectangular garment, sometimes made up of tartan, which could be worn several ways: the belted plaid or "great kilt" which preceded the modern kilt; the arisaid, a large shawl that could be wrapped into a dress; and several types of shoulder cape, such as the full plaid and fly plaid. In time, plaid was used to describe blankets themselves. In former times, the term plaiding or pladding was sometimes used to refer to tartan cloth.
Weaving and design
Weaving construction
The Scottish Register of Tartans provides the following summary definition of tartan:In more detail, traditional tartan cloth is a tight, staggered 2/2 twill weave of worsted wool: the horizontal weft is woven in a simple arrangement of two-over-two-under the fixed, vertical warp, advancing one thread at each pass. As each thread in the weft crosses threads in the warp, the staggering by one means that each warp thread will also cross two weft threads. The result, when the material is examined closely, is a characteristic 45-degree diagonal pattern of "ribs" where different colours cross. Where a thread in the weft crosses threads of the same colour in the warp, this produces a solid colour on the tartan, while a weft thread crossing warp threads of a different colour produces an equal admixture of the two colours alternating, producing the appearance of a third colour – a halftone blend or mixture – when viewed from further back. Thus, a set of two base colours produces three different colours including one blend, increasing quadratically with the number of base colours; so a set of six base colours produces fifteen blends and a total of twenty-one different perceived colours. This means that the more stripes and colours used, the more blurred and subdued the tartan's pattern becomes. Unlike in simple checker or dicing patterns, no solid colour in a tartan appears next to another solid colour, only a blend.
James D. Scarlett offered a definition of a usual tartan pattern :
The sequence of thread colours in the sett, starts at an edge and either reverses or repeats on what are called pivot points or pivots. In diagram A, the sett begins at the first pivot, reverses at the second pivot, continues, then reverses again at the next pivot, and will carry on in this manner horizontally. In diagram B, the sett proceeds in the same way as in the warp but vertically. The diagrams illustrate the construction of a typical symmetric tartan. However, on a rare asymmetric tartan, the sett does not reverse at the pivots, it just repeats at them. An old term for the latter type is cheek or cheeck pattern. Also, some tartans do not have exactly the same sett for the warp and weft. This means the warp and weft will have differing thread counts. Asymmetric and differing-warp-and-weft patterns are more common in madras cloth and some other weaving traditions than in Scottish tartan.
A tartan is recorded by counting the threads of each colour that appear in the sett. The thread count not only describes the width of the stripes on a sett, but also the colours used. Usually every number in a thread count is an even number to assist in manufacture. The first and last threads of the thread count are the pivots. A thread count combined with exact colour information and other weaving details is referred to as a ticket stamp or simply ticket.
File:Tartan Weaving in Lochcarron.jpg|thumb|right|Tartan weaving in Lochcarron, Scottish Highlands
There is no universally standardised way to write a thread count, but the different systems are easy to distinguish. As a simple example:
- The thread count "/K4 R24 K24 Y4/" corresponds to a mirroring pattern of 4 black threads, 24 red threads, 24 black threads, 4 yellow threads, in which the beginning black and ending yellow pivots are repeated ; this is a "full-count at the pivots" thread count.
- * An equivalent notation is boldfacing the pivot abbreviations: K4 R24 K24 Y4.
- The same tartan could also be represented as "K/2 R24 K24 Y/2", in markup that indicates that the leading black and trailing yellow duplicated before continuing from these pivot points ; this is a "half-count at the pivots" thread count.
- In the older and potentially ambiguous style of thread-counting, without the "/" notation, a thread count like "K4 R24 K24 Y4" is assumed to be full-count at the pivots, unless the author clearly indicates otherwise.
- An asymmetric tartan, one that does not mirror, would be represented in a full-sett thread count with "..." markup, as "...K4 R24 K24 Y4...".
Though thread counts are quite specific, they can be modified depending on the desired size of the tartan. For example, the sett of a tartan may be too large to fit upon the face of a necktie. In this case, the thread count would be reduced . In some works, a thread count is reduced to the smallest even number of threads required to accurately reproduce the design; in such a case, it is often necessary to up-scale the thread count proportionally for typical use in kilts and plaids.
Before the 19th century, tartan was often woven with thread for the weft that was up to 1/3 thicker than the fine thread used for the warp, which would result in a rectangular rather than square pattern; the solution was to adjust the weft thread count to return the pattern to square, or make it non-square on purpose, as is still done in a handful of traditional tartans. Uneven warp-and-weft thread thickness could also contribute to a striped rather than checked appearance in some tartan samples.
The predominant colours of a tartan are called the under-check ; sometimes the terms ground, background, or base are used instead, especially if there is only one dominant colour. Thin, contrasting lines are referred to as the over-check. Over-checks in pairs are sometimes referred to as tram lines, tramlines, or tram tracks. Bright over-checks are sometimes bordered on either side, for extra contrast, by additional thin lines, often black, called guard lines or guards. Historically, the weaver William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn sometimes wove bright over-checks in silk, to give some added shine. Tartan used for plaids often have a purled fringe.
File:Plaid with purled fringe.jpg|thumb|right|upright|alt=Zoom-in on a predominantly red tartan plaid, showing its bottom edge with a purled fringe|Zoom-in on a bagpiper's full plaid, showing the purled fringe style typical for such garments
An old-time practice, to the 18th century, was to add an accent on plaids or sometimes kilts in the form of a selvedge in herringbone weave at the edge, 1–3 inches wide, but still fitting into the colour pattern of the sett; a few modern weavers will still produce some tartan in this style. Sometimes more decorative selvedges were used: Selvedge marks were borders formed by repeating a colour from the sett in a broad band, sometimes further bordered by a thin strip of another colour from the sett or decorated in mid-selvedge with two thin strips; these were typically used for the bottoms of belted plaids and kilts, and were usually black in military tartans, but could be more colourful in civilian ones. The more elaborate selvedge patterns were a wider series of narrow stripes using some or all of the colours of the sett; these were almost exclusively used on household tartans, and on two opposing sides of the fabric. The very rare total border is an all-four-sides selvedge of a completely different sett; described by Peter Eslea MacDonald as "an extraordinarily difficult feature to weave and can be regarded as the zenith of the tartan weaver's art", it only survives in Scottish-style tartan as a handful of 18th-century samples. The style has also been used in Estonia in the weaving of nocat=y shawls/plaids.
Tartan is usually woven balanced-warp, repeating evenly from a pivot point at the centre outwards and with a complete sett finishing at the outer selvedge; e.g. a piece of tartan for a plaid might be 24 setts long and 4 wide. An offset, off-set, or unbalanced weave is one in which the pattern finishes at the edge in the middle of a pivot colour; this was typically done with pieces intended to be joined to make larger spans of cloth with the pattern continuing across the seam; if the tartan had a selvedge mark or selvedge pattern, it was at the other side of the warp.
The term hard tartan refers to a version of the cloth woven with very tightly wound, non-fuzzy thread, producing a comparatively rougher and denser material than is now typical for kilts. It was in common use up until the 1830s. There are extant but uncommon samples of hard tartan from the early 18th century that use the more intricate herringbone instead of twill weave throughout the entire cloth.
While modern tartan is primarily a commercial enterprise on large power looms, tartan was originally the product of rural weavers of the pre-industrial age, and can be produced by a dedicated hobbyist with a strong, stable hand loom. Since around 1808, the traditional size of the warp reed for tartan is, the length of the Scottish ell. Telfer Dunbar describes the setup thus:
Splits are also referred to as dents, and Porters are also called gangs.