Talk:Tartan

Tartan colours
The colours used in a tartan's sett do have certain meanings, as does the amount of one colour in relation to other colours. I'm not very sure about many of them and would appreciate a list of the colours and the usual meaning, so as to be better able to read classic Clan settsn (and also weigh the claims made by the many "fictive" and fashion setts, chuckle chuckle... ;=} ).

I know there is one for landownership (brown or green?), one for coastal or Islay clans (blue, IIRC), yellow or gold--wealthy clan (e.g. Buchanan), black--clan with much ties to the clergy, there is one for livestock-wealth (was it green for the pasture or read for the meat?), military connections (red?)... What else are there, and could an authority on the topic pls. insert them in the Tartan article?

Thanks,

DJ Vollkasko

Temporary Newton Library

http://www.stillnewt.org/library

(User:212.149.48.43 11:08:03 8 February 2006)
 * The article now covers this, as entirely a modern thing. There is nothing like an established code of meanings for colours. Rather, the designer of the tartan asserts what inspiration they had for using particular colours, and this is best recorded at that tartans's individual entry in a tartan database. (Example: ).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: I can't find any source anywhere for ideas like yellow meaning money, black meaning clergy, etc., etc. Modern tartans, however, frequently come with notes in the tartan databases like TartanRegister.gov.uk indicating why designers chose particular colours, but these are specific to a designer and are not a shared set of symbolic meanings. PS: The "16th century" section covers how red setts were more common in the eastern clans and green/blue ones in the west.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The legend of colours conveying a heraldic-style differencing system is addressed at the "Colour, palettes, and meaning" section in a footnote. In lots and lots and lots of reading, I have yet to encounter any claims that brown/green stood for land ownership, gold/yellow for wealth, black for clergy, etc., so the article is not specifically addressing them (no sources). I think the "gold for wealth" is a distortion of the idea that some of the brighter colours were more costly (due to imported dyestuffs; it's part of why they tended to be used as thin over-checks, but I haven't found a really clear source on this yet I have now, and have cited it. ). "Black for clergy" can probably be traced to one or another alleged clerical tartans made up in the Vestiarium Scoticum being black and white (Scarlett 1990 mentioned this in passing - correction: it was Logan; see below ). But at this point it's basically original research on my part; I would need a source more directly spelling this out. (I would like to be able to dispel this "colours have specific meanings" legend, but I can't find a source that even mentions it yet, beyond the old Victorian belief that it was a heraldic differencing system.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:00, 13 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Some more on alleged clerical tartans: First, the church kept better records than anyone, so we would expect to find some evidence therein, but there is none. Rather the opposite: there are bans on the ministerial wearing of bright or "variant" coloured clothing, and the latter would surely include tartan. Not to mention tartan plaids themselves, by name, were banned several times by various church bodies. James Logan in the execrable The Scottish Gaël (1831), the first in a series of Victorian tartan books that veered between plagiarism and extreme imagination, listed a "Clergy" tartan in black, white, and grey, as if it were something of antiquity, but it is clearly based on an 1820+ fashion pattern by Wilsons of Bannockburn, which was named "Priest". Frank Adam in The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands (1908, and another work that is basically crap, even in the later edition heavily revised by Thomas Innes of Learney) listed a blue, black, and white "clerical" tartan with a made-up Gaelic name, but it is also clearly a rip-off of the Wilson's "fancy" pattern. (Source: James D. Scarlett, Tartan: The Highland Textile, 1990, pp. 10–11.) I'm not sure "ecclesiastical tartans" are enough of a pervasive tartan legend to bother covering in the WP article, which is already quite long.  If so, I guess it could be a footnote under "Tartans for specific purposes". Though I'm skeptical anyone reads the footnotes, and more of them should be converted into main-body text, after the article is split up.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Tartan etiquette
This is part of the article, the last part of the 'clan tartans' section. I don't think it belongs there though. I wonder if the article could have a short 'tartan etiquette' section. That is what this paragraph appears to be. We would need some references though. What does anyone think? --Celtus (talk) 05:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The article's structure is better now, and there is an etiquette section. I cannot find any reliable (or even unreliable for that matter) sourcing for the Queen Anne claims. This sounds like yet another bit of misty legend.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which, all this talk of "original" this and "originally" that is wrong. The royal Stewart pattern can only be dated to c. 1800, in records of Wilsons of Bannockburn. The idea that it's some pre-Jacobite "ancient" clan tartan is another bit of sourceless legendry.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Tartan vs plaid
Why is this article not called Plaid? I can tell you that no one in North America says "tartan." Explain that in Scotland "a plaid is a tartan cloth slung over the shoulder or a blanket." But don't call the article "tartan" because of that. Macarion (talk) 01:09, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a North American encyclopedia - it's a global one, see WP:WORLDVIEW. As such any local dialect of English can be used, but there are fairly strict rules about what dialect to use when the subject has a particularly close association with a particular country - see WP:ENGVAR. In this case, the article obviously has a close association with Scotland and so its title and contents should be in British English (and arguably Scottish English, but that's another matter...). Hence it's called "tartan".  However if you go to the Plaid article you will get a link here as one of the options. Usually it works the other way - us non-Americans have to put up with North American usage for all sorts of articles on Wikipedia, so it's only fair to have a bit of give and take. Le Deluge (talk) 22:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with Deluge that since the tartan is culturally associated with Scotland, this article should use the word tartan and not plaid. As much as I find it shocking that my coworker here in California does not know what a tartan is, still, the world does not revolve around American English or Wikipedia articles purely written in American English. Another word for small is wee and you can say grand for good. This is an opinion of someone who lived both in Scotland and U.S.A. ICE77 (talk) 07:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the fact that the idea that Americans don't know what tartan means and don't use it is just wrong anyway. It tends to be used more for named (clan, family, district, organizational, etc.) setts, with generic "fashion" setts begin called plaid. Virtually no one in the US would speak of a "plaid kilt", even if they're also likely to use "plaid shirt" rather than "tartan shirt", but they know what you mean if you say "tartan shirt". The previous attempt to rename this page failed for good reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 8 July 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is clear consensus that the article should not be moved to the proposed title, nor is there consensus regarding any of the other titles which were proposed. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jack Frost (talk) 05:57, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Tartan → Scottish and Irish tartan – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. HLHJ (talk) 03:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Either we need to rename this article to something culture-specific like "Scottish and Irish tartan", or we need to include all the other cultures that use tartan/plaid/patterns made by varying the colour of both warp and weft. There's traditional plaid/tartan cloth in Japan, in India, in various parts of Africa, etc.. I'd suggest a rename. This article deals primarily with Scotland (and a bit of Ireland); the short description even ignores Ireland. The weaving technique is hardly restricted to these places. We need an article somewhere on these woven patterns generally; this article does not represent a worldwide view of the subject, which is fine but it should be named accordingly. Suggestions for other names for a general article are welcome.


 * Oppose. Utterly overwhelmingly, English-language sources use the word to refer to what is described in this article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:57, 14 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I think we've established that there's opposition to the proposed move, there is opposition to discussing alternate terms here, and the discussion has apparently gotten TL;DR. HLHJ (talk) 23:58, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


 * oppose. The title Tartan is & has always been ethnic to Scots/Scottish, or Scotland & Celtic heritage. A separate page should be crated for general checked garments of different cultures, or races. The opinion, with pictures is a good example of an individual who does not know, understand, or care for the individuality of cultural, racial garments, simply "they look similar" so "I believe they are the same thing"!, this is irresponsible thought. The page is for Tartan, with a kind, already existing reference that tartan & its heritage relates outside Scotland, lets try avoid globalising Scottish clothing/identity with improper opinions. 194.73.217.219 (talk) 15:38, 12 June 2024 (UTC)C.Cardivil

Follow-up (on internationalising)
(Aside from confusion of Scottish and Irish) one of the big flaws in the proposal above and of much of the reasoning througout the discussion is that the fact of modern-day worldwide use of tartan/plaid (terms which are now entirely adequately explained in the lead), and a bunch of photographic evidence of tartan and more often simple chequer-board pattern from around the world, tells nothing encyclopedic and historic. Of course tartan is all over the world, just as T-shirts and jeans are; modern manufacturers have a global market. This doesn't indicate that we need to devote space to presentation of information about Western informal dress in every society, nor do we need to do something like that for use of tartan everywhere. A few other quibbles: the Ghana picture doesn't illustrate anything related to tartan (the grid-like pattern on one cloth is a printed pattern, not woven, as the colours do not blend); checkerboard (dicing) is also not related to tartan but is a patchwork or printed pattern in which, again, colours do not blend (same goes for the modern "chequered kimono" image – it is an unrelated kind of textile to tartan); the two gingham examples are mis-described as three- and four-colour (they are both two-colour, which is definitionally true of the gingham pattern; if it's got three, it's tattersall); and "heraldic tartan" isn't a real term.

What be of encyclopedic relevance would be evidence of use of tartan-style patterns outside Northwestern Europe in the pre-modern era. Of all the evidence presented above, the only thing useful is the 1780s Japanese woodcut. This inspired me to do some digging and we now have an "In other cultures" section with a "Japanese kōshi" subsection. It's a start, and we will probably need some additional subsections on use of similar cloth in other parts of the world without any clear connection to Scottish tartan. This requires source research, and a bunch of whining that the article is "too Scottish" isn't helpful. Our article is heavy on Scotland-related details because all the reliable source material is.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * One gap I can identify: coverage of Maasai shúkà (we have a little on it at Maasai people). It is frequently in tartan patterns, almost emblematically so. The Maasai and the British were 19th-century allies for a time in various of the colonial-period wars.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 07:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I've added a subsection, Tartan that covers this, but it's actually got more detail and sourcing than the corresponding Maasai people, so at Talk:Maasai people I've suggested some merging or even a separate Shúkà article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, as noted in an earlier thread, there's a tartan tradition in Nazaré, Portugal. Need to find some sources on this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Image to use for this later: File:Museu dos Texteis - MUTEX 22.jpg – antique loom, with tartan cloth, in Museu dos Têxteis (Museum of Textiles) in Castelo Branco, Portugal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Commons appears to have zero images of the clothing style. From what I gather here, it's a style called escocês ('Scottish'), and was formerly commonly worn, along with a long sock-like cap ending in a tassel, by fishermen. What I can tell from other materials is that it's a now-old folk costume (obsolescent after maybe the 1950s), and is not the common wear of the people today, but just put on (perhaps for the benefit of tourists) during a few saints day festivals and a carnival period starting in early January.  A recent photo of fishermen in the area at work doesn't show them wearing tartan stuff. I can't find any source to corrorborate the story posted above in another thread: "Legend has it this was from when the Scots landed there to help the Spanish and Portuguese defeat Napolean's army. The locals were so happy to see them or so taken with their garments that they fashioned lighter, more colorful versions." However, there appears to be a book that would be a good source, if it can be found and someone fluent in Portuguese can read it:  In the interim, I cannot find any usable colour images, and only a tiny handful of black and white ones (a couple of Edwardian-era postcards) that could be poached for Commons. Beyond that, I don't have anything further to report on Nazaré tartan. There's just not yet enough material to work with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, our lead image at Tatars shows 1870 Tatars of Kazan wearing tartan-patterened clothing, so we need to cover their use of this kind of cloth. Haven't found much; one blog showed examples and also said they're similar to patterns used by Finnic peoples. The angel in Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus, with a tartan cloak, is generally held to be wearing "Tatar" cloth, but that meant Mongol cloth.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, I got those integrated into the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:28, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * J. F. Campbell (1862), p. 366, wrote of tartan (and other) patterns being common in the South Sea Islands (though that's a vague term, and could refer to peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia, or Micronesia).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:34, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Still haven't found anything usable on this sub-subject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Potential source: – An expensive academic volume.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Scarlett (2008) also observed tartan patterns in Bhutan. Newsome has an article on it here and there may be enough material for a little subsection on it. There's some more on it here, but not a reliable source. Bhutanese weaving is often far more complex than tartan, but does include tartan patterns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:24, 11 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 20:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Found some Bhutan pics on Commons, so will add some to gallery. Google Scholar has papers that might go into it ; I have not trawled through them yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Some of the terminology is mathra, pangtsi, bura, and kira, though I'm not sure yet which are terms for particular garments, for types of cloth, or for patterns. Found an entire book, substantial portions of which are online:   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * From that book, I'm gathering that the generic term is bumthang, with various specific varieties having their own names (mathra, adha[ng] mathra, sethra, burai mathra, pangtsi; non-tartan linear stripes, like seersucker cloth, is called adha mathra). I can't really tell more, because the full relevant pages are not available from the GBooks preview.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There was enough material accessible online from that book (by browsing its full-accessible pages and by searching snippet-view in it) to write up a short subsection on mathra (the actual general term) tartans in Bhutan, so I did, with some Commons pics.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * South American tartans/plaids have been mentioned in a source or two. I went through both Weaving identities: Construction of dress and self in a highland Guatemala town by C. E. Hendrickson (1995), and Costume and Identity in Highland Ecuador by A. P. Rowe & L. Meisch (1998), and while I saw a few pictures that had a tartan-ish appearance, some were not true tartan but the product of supplementary weaving (colours crossing each other without blending), regular linear-striped cloth was more prevalent, and even more represented were complex abstract and figural patterns. Neither book addressed tartan/plaid patterns as a particular style in Guatemala or Ecuador at all, so it seems we have to look elsewhere in South America for an encyclopedically noteworthy tradition of weaving this kind of cloth.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Try Bolivia next. I did see a pic of handmade Bolivian poncho cloth (looked like cotton) that was a simple tartan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:02, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Splitting of article
I think the clan and regimental tartans sections are long and developed enough to consider splitting out into side articles. The whole article is still shorter than plenty of other articles (e.g. on countries, on major politicians and other public figures, etc.) – it's not even in the top 500 largest WP articles – but it is getting pretty long. Leaving behind a WP:SUMMARY-style précis of each will take a fair amount of careful editing, though. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The whole set of history sections might actually be splittable as History of tartan, much as Silk is now split off to History of silk and a lot of additional side articles. For now, I prefer to work on sourcing as much material as possible. I'm basically taking a working vacation and doing source-research on tartan full time until I run out of steam.  We can re-arrange it later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:10, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Separate articles that I think can be spun off, so far: I think also some stubs can be created: That said, I – being the only one doing any of this work at all – do not want to do this splitting any time soon, as I'm still sourcing the material on a daily basis, and doing so would become vastly more difficult if the work were spread across half a dozen or more separate articles; often a single source page provides material relevant to three or more sections of the WP article. (Given that I just ordered 10+ more source books, this is going to take a while.) Just the splitting itself is going to be a tremendous job, because all the source citations will have to be repaired on a page-by-page basis, and then the material has to be summarized (sometimes multiple times, e.g. clan and regimental tartans have to be differently summarized for the main article and for the history article, with differing levels of detail and a different focus/intent). Per WP:HASTE (and WP:IAR for that matter), there is no hurry, and this article is still smaller than a bunch of others across many topics, like List of Glagolitic manuscripts, ‎List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland, Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 6), ‎List of Hindi songs recorded by Asha Bhosle, ‎Municipal history of Quebec, 1922 regnal list of Ethiopia, List of battles by geographic location, List of Gunsmoke (TV series) episodes, ‎List of common misconceptions, ‎Opinion polling for the 2023 Spanish general election, ‎List of 2021–22 NBA season transactions, ‎2022 in science (many of them rote lists that are barely encyclopedic). If they aren't breaking anything, then neither is Tartan. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC); updated 01:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Tartan design and weaving, from the "Weaving construction", "Styles and design principles", and "Colour, palettes, and meaning" sections
 * History of tartan, from the "Pre-medieval origins", "Medieval", "16th century", "17th and 18th centuries", "Late Georgian", "Victorian", and "20th century to present" sections, with compressed summaries also of "Regimental tartans" and "Clan tartans".
 * Regimental tartan, from the "Regimental tartans" section
 * Clan tartan, from the "Clan tartans" section
 * Shúkà, from the "Maasai shúkà" subsection
 * Kōshi (textile), from the "Japanese kōshi" subsection
 * Mathra (textile), from the "Bhutanese mathra" subsection
 * Can probably also do one for Suurrätt, by translating the Estonian article.
 * This has gotten unwieldy enough yet also well-developed enough to start splitting it now. I'm starting with the "Regimental tartans" section, then will do "Clan tartans", then probably "History of tartan". This will take a lot of work since all the citations will have to be repaired, new leads written, WP:SUMMARY material left behind in its place, etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:43, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Regimental tartan is now live. I will next work on compressing Tartan to a concise WP:SUMMARY.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:13, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Done with the post-split cleanup in that section. It could be compressed even further, but I'll wait until splitting off of History of tartan and see how long that turns out (that side article will need its own summary of regimental tartans, probably the text of that section here now, to be replaced in turn by an even shorter version).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Next working on splitting out a Tartan weaving and design article, to encompass the current "#Weaving construction", "#Styles and design principles", and "#Colour, palettes, and meaning" sections. Will do Clan tartan after that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've got most of the Tartan design and weaving article split and "massaged" into shape at User:SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tartan design and weaving, but still need to build a lead section for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Still working on it (about 95% done, but there are a few more tidbits in the main article that could move into it). Have some pressing "real life" stuff to deal with this week.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:14, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Haven't forgotten about it; just got side-tracked for a while by an off-site project.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:24, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * And then an on-site one. Still working on this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Additional sources
Found these, but only the abstracts are available for free:
 * Also available at ResearchGate and ScienceGate  but paywalled there, too.
 * Also available at ResearchGate but paywalled there, too.
 * Also available at JSTOR but paywalled there, too.  Hinderks (2014) says: "As late as 1794, it was documented that only military regiments had fixed tartans.", and cites Dziennik (2012) for this, but it's too vague a claim to use in our own article; need to see what Dziennik actually wrote and on what basis.
 * Also available at U. Glasgow and ResearchGate  but paywalled there, too.
 * – said to be directly related to tartan
 * An old primary source:
 * – Something about adapting programmable wearable-art tech to a tartan pattern
 * – Seems to be focused on the tension between (individual) intellectual property and (collective) cultural heritage concerns; involves tartan, Scotch whisky, Harris tweed, etc.
 * The Proceedings of the Scottish Tartans Society, journal, 1980s-1990s – will be nearly impossible to find, probably, except in Scottish libraries.
 * Legal case documents to get access to: Holmes et al. v. LL Bean Inc., US District Court for Maine (Portland Office); case no. 2:2006cv00211; 30 November 2006 . Need access to the PACER system, which might be possible through The Wikipedia Library. In this case, one Jane or Jan and David Holmes of Plymouth, Maine, sued US clothing company LL Bean for using a tartan design Jan[e] acquired the rights to, in LL Bean's "Americana Tartan Shirt"; company defended its use by arguing that the tartan is in the public domain since it is widely recognised as the state tartan of Maine. I can't find any info yet on how this case went. THere was at least one bit of news coverage when the case was filed . As of 2007, neither that tartan nor a competing one were official tartans of the state.
 * A key economic report (behind the "Tartans Bill" that created the Scottish Register of Tartans) has gone missing: ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd, The Economic Impact of the Tartan Industry in Scotland: A Report Submitted to Scottish Enterprise National Textiles Team, C3365 / May 2007, apparently actually written in 2006. It used to be here, but is gone and web.archive.org did not capture it, and it seems to be nowhere else either. May have to ask people at Scottish-Enterprise.com.
 * – Don't know how to get that paper, but it seems to have been reworked into a chapter of:
 * Probably only findable on paper in a British library: The Coat of Arms, July–October 1959, includes: "D. A. and R. Saunders discuss, with the assistance of numerous diagrams, the history and making of Scottish tartans".
 * A key economic report (behind the "Tartans Bill" that created the Scottish Register of Tartans) has gone missing: ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd, The Economic Impact of the Tartan Industry in Scotland: A Report Submitted to Scottish Enterprise National Textiles Team, C3365 / May 2007, apparently actually written in 2006. It used to be here, but is gone and web.archive.org did not capture it, and it seems to be nowhere else either. May have to ask people at Scottish-Enterprise.com.
 * – Don't know how to get that paper, but it seems to have been reworked into a chapter of:
 * Probably only findable on paper in a British library: The Coat of Arms, July–October 1959, includes: "D. A. and R. Saunders discuss, with the assistance of numerous diagrams, the history and making of Scottish tartans".
 * Probably only findable on paper in a British library: The Coat of Arms, July–October 1959, includes: "D. A. and R. Saunders discuss, with the assistance of numerous diagrams, the history and making of Scottish tartans".

Papers available in full-text:
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.
 * – This is an old primary source, but might contain something usable.

Books to check out:
 * – "This critical re-evaluation of tartan in Scottish culture draws together contributions from leading researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, resulting in a highly authoritative volume." I have this on hand and it is what I'm currently going through for the WP article, as of 2023-07-05. This is going to be a lot of slow work, as it is dense, academic material.
 * – One essay from this edited volume has already been cited, but there are probably more of use here. It's a non-cheap academic volume, but may be available from JSTOR.
 * – I have used this source (all of it) already, as of 2023-07-05.
 * – I have plundered most of this for material already. I did not go over the tartan-by-tartan "The Setts of the Tartans" chapter that makes up the bulk of the book (and there are surely a few gems hidden in there), because there are much bigger source fish to fry.
 * – the two printings have the same number of pages so are probably equivalent. The ISBN here is for the 1990 printing, but the URL goes to the 1981 version. I have the 1990 version on order anyway.
 * 2 vols. – I've bit the bullet and ordered this, trans-Atlantic (because the US sellers wanted even more than the British ones with shipping).
 * – This sounds worth getting, but it's available free online, so yay.
 * – This appears to just be a newered edition, under a new title, of the work below. I have this one on-hand.
 * – There's a newer 2013 printing/edition from another publisher (see above), but unknown if it materially differs. We cite it once, so see if the page number cited for the paper one above still works for this online version (if so, swap out a citation to this one, since it's online-verifiable).
 * – The one is different from the above two. I have a copy on order.
 * – Only 84 pages, but a reviewer says "explains a lot in a very concise and easily understood manner. It is a great tool and resource in a small package." Might be useful for terminology citations, etc. I ordered a copy, since I found it cheap.
 * – Might have useful info in it, but has become a pricey collectors' item.
 * – Sounds worth a look, so I ordered it.
 * The old 1991 edition is available online . I have the 3rd ed. on hand now.
 * – Surprisingly makes a case for Lowland origin of tartan and its spread to the Highlands; this is too bold a claim to even mention in the WP article without reading it in detail and giving it a serious WP:DUEWEIGHT analysis.
 * – I think this covers some tartan-style cloth in South America and elsewhere. Old edition is available online.
 * – The old 2008 edition is available online . I have the current edition on order.
 * – This is old enough it should be treated as a primary source. Update: I have plundered this already for everything usable in it for this article.
 * – Old; treat as primary source. This material may be integrated into the larger, later, multi-author source just above.
 * – This one may actually have some historical information about tartan in it. However, there's a newer edition than this, 1998, ISBN 978-0760711200. The article already has one citation to the 1994 version. I've ordered the 1998 version, since I found it for a pittance.
 * – This is mostly a pocket flip-book of clan tartans, but did have some usable info in it; it's cited at least once in the article. If the same info can be found in their other book above, might be better to just cite the one.
 * – Despite the vague topical scope, apparently has a significant amount of kilt & tartan stuff in it.
 * – Very broad topic, but does address tartan as a nationalism symbol. Hinderks (2014) cited an old edition of this.
 * – very partial text is available online here
 * – Has good material in it, quoted by a blogger here. I'll use that intermediary source in the interim, as the original book is very elusive.
 * – I've ordered a copy of this.
 * – I've ordered a copy of this.
 * – Seems to be a combination of an overview book like Banks & de La Chapell's Tartan: Romancing the Plaid and a clan-tartans identifier book. I ordered it anyway just in case because I found it for very cheap.
 * – This is potentially useful, but I'm not ordering it until working on a district tartans side article. Never mind; I found it cheap, so I ordered it.
 * – This is the classic clan tartan "flip book", in the latest edition I can identify. I ordered this one since I found it very cheap, and should probably have one of these (though will only need one, so might as well go with the original).
 * – Little 32-page local-history publication; will be nearly impossible to find.
 * – Book is a general sociological overview of modern Scotland; chapter focuses on tartan, Kailyard literature, Clydseism, and other themes.
 * – Blurb says it has a chapter on "the invention of tartan and the romance of the Highlands"
 * – Something potentially interesting in this work on "social ideologies" behind British approaches to design: "[The author] reminds us how William Morris was urged ... to search for something 'English in character' in his designs ... 'reinventing a golden age of English design, before the factory system'. Use is made of ideas relating to 'the invention of tradition' to draw attention to the fabricated preindustrial origins of Highland dress and specific tartans in Scotland, the author further developing the discussion in a brief exploration of aspects of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, including attempts to invent a national costume." It's quite expensive for about a 100-page book, so good that it's available via Internet Archive "check out".
 * – From review: "an examination of the revival of Irish and Scottish cottage textile crafts — the embroidering of poplin, lacemaking, and the weaving of tweed and tartan — that also demonstrates the complexities and tensions caused by the 'internal colonization' of the so-called Celtic fringe by London society." One of the sources we're already citing seems to have been influenced by this, perhaps tertiarily, as it used the exact phrase "internal colonisation", namely Hinderks (2014), pp. 8–9, citing Dziennik (2012), and Nicholson (2005). The books is comparatively quite expensive, around $75 used. :-(
 * – A bit pricey.
 * – There may be a useful sentence or two in this mini-essay.
 * – Book is a general sociological overview of modern Scotland; chapter focuses on tartan, Kailyard literature, Clydseism, and other themes.
 * – Blurb says it has a chapter on "the invention of tartan and the romance of the Highlands"
 * – Something potentially interesting in this work on "social ideologies" behind British approaches to design: "[The author] reminds us how William Morris was urged ... to search for something 'English in character' in his designs ... 'reinventing a golden age of English design, before the factory system'. Use is made of ideas relating to 'the invention of tradition' to draw attention to the fabricated preindustrial origins of Highland dress and specific tartans in Scotland, the author further developing the discussion in a brief exploration of aspects of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, including attempts to invent a national costume." It's quite expensive for about a 100-page book, so good that it's available via Internet Archive "check out".
 * – From review: "an examination of the revival of Irish and Scottish cottage textile crafts — the embroidering of poplin, lacemaking, and the weaving of tweed and tartan — that also demonstrates the complexities and tensions caused by the 'internal colonization' of the so-called Celtic fringe by London society." One of the sources we're already citing seems to have been influenced by this, perhaps tertiarily, as it used the exact phrase "internal colonisation", namely Hinderks (2014), pp. 8–9, citing Dziennik (2012), and Nicholson (2005). The books is comparatively quite expensive, around $75 used. :-(
 * – A bit pricey.
 * – There may be a useful sentence or two in this mini-essay.
 * – Blurb says it has a chapter on "the invention of tartan and the romance of the Highlands"
 * – Something potentially interesting in this work on "social ideologies" behind British approaches to design: "[The author] reminds us how William Morris was urged ... to search for something 'English in character' in his designs ... 'reinventing a golden age of English design, before the factory system'. Use is made of ideas relating to 'the invention of tradition' to draw attention to the fabricated preindustrial origins of Highland dress and specific tartans in Scotland, the author further developing the discussion in a brief exploration of aspects of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, including attempts to invent a national costume." It's quite expensive for about a 100-page book, so good that it's available via Internet Archive "check out".
 * – From review: "an examination of the revival of Irish and Scottish cottage textile crafts — the embroidering of poplin, lacemaking, and the weaving of tweed and tartan — that also demonstrates the complexities and tensions caused by the 'internal colonization' of the so-called Celtic fringe by London society." One of the sources we're already citing seems to have been influenced by this, perhaps tertiarily, as it used the exact phrase "internal colonisation", namely Hinderks (2014), pp. 8–9, citing Dziennik (2012), and Nicholson (2005). The books is comparatively quite expensive, around $75 used. :-(
 * – A bit pricey.
 * – There may be a useful sentence or two in this mini-essay.
 * – There may be a useful sentence or two in this mini-essay.

Sources to probably skip:


 * – Does not seem to be online, and probably not useful as a source anyway, since it's just a master's thesis.
 * – Skip this one; it's just a 62-page booklet.
 * – This one is just another tartan flip-book of clan and district tartans, that also includles US, Canadian, Australian, etc. entries. I don't think it goes into historical use of tartan-style cloth in world cultures, so it is unlikely to be of use for this article.
 * – This appears to be another flip-book of clan tartan images, like Bain's guide; probably of no use for this article.
 * – This be the newest edition of Urquhart; I'll have to check. This  seem to be the hardback edition from the same year, presumably with the same text. As a "flip book" of clans and tartans, I don't see much use for it at this article, though.
 * –Another tartans flip-book, probably not useful here.
 * – Another clan tartans flip-book, probably useless for this article.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto, and giving imprimatur to industry-created "Irish tartans" makes the reliability suspect, despite the publisher.
 * - Yet another clan tartans flip-book of dubious use for this article.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Ditto. (There's a 2000 edition, ISNB 9781585740949, but I doubt it's different (probably just hardcover vs. softcover.)
 * – Yet another clan-tartans book. And old enough it has to be treated as a primary source.
 * – Another clan tartans flip-book; can't see any use for that at this article.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Yet another clan tartans flip-book. Don't need this for this article.
 * – Sounds like another flip-book of clan tartans.
 * – Sounds like a "coffee table book", and seems (from its blurb) to devote a lot of material to US and Canadian designs; I'm skipping this one.
 * – Yet another tartan flip-book.
 * – Ditto. And just the fact that it takes "Irish tartans" seriously, despite them being wholly a product of the industry for marketing to Irish-Americans, with no connection to actual Irish tradition, makes it a suspect source.
 * – Same comment as above; this is clearly pandering to and being continually updated for bogus "Irish tartans" being churned out for Americans; won't have anything useful for a historical WP article. And it's expensive anyway. (Seems to originally have been titled Tartans for the Irish! Suggested Tartans for Irish and Ulster Scots Names, though that might actualy be a largely redundant separate book.) The only use I can think of for this is for eventual articles on non-Scottish tartans, since it covers Welsh, Manx, Cornish, etc.
 * – Yet another clan tartans index; can't see this being useful.
 * – This looks pretty thin on "history", versus pattern terminology.
 * – Sounded promising (despite being a very expensive academic volume), but doesn't seem to mention tartan at all.
 * – Possible this has some information on English woollen mills producing competitive tartan, but I'm doing going to buy it to find out.
 * 3 vols. – Ditto.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Has a chapter on woollen history, but unknown if it addresses tartan.
 * – May or may not cover tartan.
 * – Ditto.
 * – Seems very ecclectic and may not have relevant content.
 * – May be more about sewing and needlepoint than weaving.
 * – Entire book on the history of cochineal; not terribly relevant here, but might be good for improving enc. coverage of that dye.
 * – Exact content unknown; have material on the evolution of Highland dress, but I doubt it (look for detailed reviews).
 * – Might be of some relevance in interpreting dresses in old portraits
 * – Does have a segment on Highland dress, but this tertiary source is unlikely to contain anything not already found in better, secondary sources above.
 * – Very weak masters thesis; its central theme that Highland dress has been gendered, since before its spread from the Highlands, is correct; but in detail, it is a gender-politics polemic, and contains multiple factual errors on almost every page (probably because it is mostly lacking in quality source material).
 * – Very weak masters thesis; its central theme that Highland dress has been gendered, since before its spread from the Highlands, is correct; but in detail, it is a gender-politics polemic, and contains multiple factual errors on almost every page (probably because it is mostly lacking in quality source material).

On the Scottish Tartans Museum, which needs its own article:
 * – Has a little about the original museum in Comrie, Scotland.
 * – Has a little about the original museum in Comrie, Scotland.

See also:
 * Talk:Regimental tartan, Talk:Highland dress, Talk:Highland dance, Talk:Highland games/Archives/2023 1, Talk:Scottish diaspora, Talk:Tartanry, Talk:Tartan Day

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 18:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Sources on ancient samples, and history of cloth
Our article at Tarim mummies says "Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, discusses similarities between it and fragments recovered from salt mines associated with the Hallstatt culture." But it doesn't cite Barber's own book for this, instead citing some paywalled paper. Weird. Anyway, this book is probably worth reviewing for details on the cloth. We've mentioned her briefly (as cited by Banks & de La Chapelle). This is the book:
 * – I have ordered a copy of this, and hae it now.

An NYT article based on Wayland Barber's stuff says: "Tracing the origin of plaid cloth to Anatolia and the Caucasus, the steppe area north of the Black Sea, her conclusion is: 'Starting from the general vicinity of the Caucasus, one group went west, the other east.'"  So, she's apparently got some detailed analysis on the spread of early tartan-type cloth, which presumably includes other pre-medieval finds than the ones we're mentioning already. A different NYT article (May 1996) mentions her work again: "Dr. Elizabeth J. W. Barber, a linguist and archeologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the author of Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton University Press, 1991), said that plaid twills had first been discovered in the ruins of Troy, from about 2600 B.C., but had not been common in the Bronze Age." It also says that material (including by Victor H. Mair) relating the Tarim mummies was published in the then-current issue of

A Guardian article says: "Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber says in her new book, The Mummies of Urumchi, that the woollen plaids discovered on the mummies could only have been woven on warp-weighted looms, which originated in Europe via the Middle East."

Wayland Barber has another book of probable interest here, but this one is a more expensive academic volume: And other that could have something relevant in it:

Also: "University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Irene Good, a specialist in early Eurasian textiles" apparently analyzed some of the cloth, and may have published something separately. Another news quote about her, from 1996: " Irene Good, a specialist in textile archeology at the Pennsylvania museum, said that the plaid fabric was 'virtually identical stylistically and technically to textile fragments' found in Austria and Germany at sites from a somewhat later period, about 700 B.C." It would be good to find her publications.

Dunbar (1979), pp. 48–49, says: The early textiles to be found in Scotland have been well described by Audrey S. Henshall in papers published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1951. The actual specimens date from the Romano-British period to the seventeenth century and are to be seen in the Scottish National Museum of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. This means there are extant samples between the "Falkirk tartan" and the "Glen Affic tartan" that our article is not accounting for. Might take some work to track down Henshall's articles, as Dunbar did not cite them in detail. He quotes from one, but not specify which, nor provide the estimated date of the sample being described, so it's presently useless for our article.

See also:
 * – Might have something on the Scandinavia tartan (Jutland, Sweden) reported from the Roman era, though it seems to mostly focus on Iceland and Greenland.

Newsome (in one of his weaker, more introductory articles) says "Tartan has been found on mummies in Kazakhstan from 2000 BC", but doesn't provide any further detail. Scottish Register of Tartans provides a reconstruction of what the tartan would have looked like originally, also without details. I'm not sure yet where this came from and have to hope that Wayland Barber's book covers it.


 * – Despite the craniometry focus, it apparently has information on the ancient Kazakhstan tartan.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC), rev'd. 13:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Term "Highland Revival period"
P. E. MacDonald uses this term fairly often, though with exact-date definitions that vary a little. "The years 1780-1840 are known as the Highland Revival period." and "There are no known examples of Highland Revival clothing being retrospective, they are stylistically all contemporary with the fashion of the time c.1780-1840." , versus "In costume terms the Highland Revival refers to the period c1782-1837 in which, as the name suggests, there was a revival of interest in, and wearing of, Highland Dress following the Act Repealing the Proscription of Highland Dress in 1782." (1837 was the beginning of Victoria's reign.)

Anyway, not sure whether to integrate it here at all or put it in Highland dress. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:26, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I integrated this briefly at the top of the Georgian section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Tarim mummies factoid
An anon pasted in the following (kind of in mid-sentence):

This may be correct, but it's off-topic for this article (especially for it's lead section!), so I have removed it. If this source is good, it's probably something to include at Tarim mummies, and I'm making note of it here for that reason. If someone else doesn't get around to examining this and, if appropriate, including something about it over there, then I probably will at some point. something about this could be in the history section here, but this article is already over-long. (See other section about that, and splitting progress.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Kirkin' o' the tartan
We have an article on this now, so should integrate mention of it in the 20th-century+ section. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Revert needed

 * I do not have an account and so cannot rollback this obvious vandalism. The "editor" already has a spam warning from self-promoting elsewhere.

212.79.110.147 (talk) 14:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)