26/03/2021
"Tartan is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. The Dress Act of 1746 attempted to bring the warrior clans under government control by banning Tartan and other aspects of Gaelic culture.
Tartan is made with alternating bands of coloured (pre-dyed) threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials.
The weft is woven in a simple twill, two over—two under the warp, advancing one thread at each pass. This forms visible diagonal lines where different colours cross, which give the appearance of new colours blended from the original ones.
The resulting blocks of colour repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines known as a sett.
When the 1746 Dress Act was repealed in 1782, Tartan was adopted as the symbolic national dress of Scotland, a status that was widely popularised after King George IV wore a tartan kilt in his 1822 visit to Scotland.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the highland tartans were only associated with either regions or districts, rather than any specific Scottish clan.
This was because like other materials, tartan designs were produced by local weavers for local tastes and would usually only use the natural dyes available in that area, as synthetic dye production was non-existent.
It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that many patterns were created and associated with Scottish clans, families, or institutions who were (or wished to be seen as) associated in some way with a Scottish heritage.
The Victorians' penchant for ordered taxonomy and the new chemical dyes then available meant that the idea of specific patterns of bright colours, or "dress" tartans, could be created and applied to a faux-nostalgic view of Scottish history.
Today tartan is no longer limited to textiles, but is also used as a name for the pattern itself, appearing on media such as paper, plastics, packaging, and wall coverings.
Tartan (Scottish Gaelic: breacan [ˈpɾʲɛxkən]) is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland; Scottish kilts alm...
