When was tartan made

Part of the reason the historical tartans are not more fully understood is because Highland Dress was actually banned after the Battle of Culloden in by the Crown, who was trying to crush the clan system.

Unfortunately, many of the old patterns had been forgotten and had to be re-invented, with the Victorian clan chiefs often adopting new tartans for their clan that were almost certainly brighter and more colourful.

Today, each colourful tartan has a very specific way in which it is made. The traditional method is to weave it using a loom, made of a warp the vertical stripes and a weft the horizontal stripes.

Each tartan is made of a base pattern called a sett. The sett is like the code of the tartan, where each different design has a unique combination of vertical and horizontal lines and blocks of colour to create a pattern that is repeated throughout the cloth.

Think of a sett as a building block, which you repeat over and over to make a piece of fabric as big as you like. Setts typically measure 5 to 6 inches 12 - 15 cms in modern day kilts which equates to around threads per sett using a medium weight wool yarn. Most, if not all, clans today have their own unique tartan pattern that is registered to that particular Clan. In fact, many Clans often have more than one version of a tartan:. The truth is that you actually wear almost any tartan you like.

There are a few exceptions, like the Royal Family tartans but these are few and far between! In conclusion, the vast majority of historians have assumed that the idea of plaids tartans was relatively new to Scotland in the seventeenth century. Archaeology tells a different story. Many historians have assumed that the idea of plaids tartans was relatively new to Scotland in the seventeenth century. The Celts have been weaving plaid twills tartans for three thousand years at least. For a European perspective on the Celts and their weaving of tartan - see the article C elts in this History section.

Members Login. The Birth of Tartan "The Celts have been weaving plaid tartan twills for three thousand years at least" Until relatively recently, it was assumed by most historians, academicsand commentators that tartan was a Johnnie-come-lately.

Dressed to Kilt photos Lloyd Bishop. Donations If you would like to give a one-off gift then please use the link below. Contact admin tartansauthority. Home What is Tartan? What is a tartan? In many countries today, the pattern of interlocking stripes called a tartan is often mistakenly known as "plaid. The original kilt was known as the "belted plaid" and consisted of a length of cloth basically a large blanket that was gathered and belted at the waist.

The plaids were most often made from a tartan cloth, and so the confusion between the two terms is understandable.

Tartan refers to the pattern of interlocking stripes, running in both the warp and weft in the cloth horizontal and vertical , or any representation of such a woven design in other media printed, painted, or otherwise rendered.

Typically today one thinks of "clan tartans" -- that is, tartan designs that represent certain Scottish clans and families. While this is typical, it was not always so.

Tartan has an ancient history. The earliest known tartan in Scotland can be dated to the third or fourth century AD. In other parts of the world, tartan cloth has been found dating to approximately BC. Virtually everywhere there was woven cloth, people created tartan designs. Yet only in Scotland have they been given such cultural significance. The women of the clan wore a curraichd of linen over their heads which fastened under their chin.

The tonnag was a small square of tartan worn over the shoulders, and the arasaid was a long self-coloured or tartan garment, which reached from the head to the ankles, pleated all round and fastened at the breast with a brooch and at the waist by a belt. Early tartans were simple checks of perhaps only two or three colours.

The colours were extracted mainly from dye-producing plants, roots, berries and trees local to a specific geographic area. These simple checks or tartans were worn by the people of the district where they were made, and as such became the area or clan tartan.

It is said that the weavers took great pain to give exact patterns of tartan by identifying each colour of every thread upon a piece of wood known as a maide dalbh, or pattern stick. An account from records how a housewife gave coloured wool to a weaver to make into cloth. She won her case and the naughty weaver was punished. With the evolution of chemical dies, weavers were able to introduce more elaborate patterns including more vivid and varied colours.

As clans grew and branched through birth, death or marriage, the newer clans evolved tartans of their own by adding an overstripe onto the basic pattern of the parent clan.