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  1. #1
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    Big announcement: new full Tartan Library showing all variant colourways

    Here's an announcement that should please anyone who loves tartan, so this seems the appropriate forum to first mention it to the world.

    As you'll know, when tartans are recorded, they are usually given quite quite general colour shade defintions: e.g. 'dark green' or 'mid blue'.

    And this is often quite different to how it's actually woven in practice, since most mills choose colours that work together, either as 'modern' or 'ancient' or 'reproduction' colours (the latter being a D.C. Dalgliesh innovation, that other mills copied under various names).

    This works fine when you're ordering fabrics off the shelf, and you have either a physical swatch or at least a photograph of the tartan to go on.

    It's not so great when you're considering getting a tartan woven to order, in your favourite colourway, when the best you can normally hope for would be a few sample yarn threads to get an idea of the shades that would go into your tartan.

    Well, that problem exists no longer!

    Welcome to the D.C. Dalgliesh Tartan Library...

    We've gone back to first principles, and created a full index of recorded tartans, each of which is shown in each of the three main colourway variants - with beautiful high quality photorealistic images, which use the actual yarn shades that would be chosen for each colourway.

    See http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/tartan_found.rpy?id=437388 for example
    and (once it's loaded!) hover over the main image to see it in all its detailed glory.

    Then click on the Ancient or Reproduction variants below, to do the same for those.

    So for example you'll find you'll find all the M tartan and an A-Z list here:
    http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/tartana...s.rpy?letter=M

    There's still some tweaking to do. There are a few gaps to fill, including some recent tartans. And this has been largely generated based on intelligent algorithms we've written, but some need manual correction, so we'll be going through them individually over the next few months. And meanwhile this will always happen whenever an order is placed. But mostly we think the results are pretty good already.

    We can also produce these instantly for any new tartan, or for special variants for anyone wanting their own yarn colour choices.

    And this is only the start of a very sophisticated order specification and recording system we're developing for D.C. Dalgliesh, which will offer a cutting edge technological front onto the very traditional artisanal weaving processes, which we still intend to change not a whit.

    But if anyone has any feedback or ideas, we'd be delighted to hear from you as always.

    Hope you like!

    Nick

  2. #2
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    Brilliant - I will be on this the rest of the day! Thanks Nick!

    Cheers,
    Last edited by creagdhubh; 8th May 12 at 08:56 AM.

  3. #3
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    I'm going to gave to sit down with this when I have an hour or so to kill. Thanks for sharing!

  4. #4
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    Wow! I have never seen the Macpherson 'hunting' tartan with the colour brown in the sett - only black, grey, red, and blue. Looks rather smart to me - looks like I have 3 more kilts (repro, modern, and ancient) that will be added to the queue!

    http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/tartan_found.rpy?id=438835

    Cheers,
    Last edited by creagdhubh; 8th May 12 at 09:01 AM.

  5. #5
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    16th August 04
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    Oh, and can I just add... if anyone does spot any variants where they believe the yarn shades allocated are wrong, or could be better, please just drop us an email and we can easily look at it.

    Thanks!

    Nick

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nick Fiddes View Post
    Oh, and can I just add... if anyone does spot any variants where they believe the yarn shades allocated are wrong, or could be better, please just drop us an email and we can easily look at it.

    Thanks!

    Nick
    Nick,

    Thanks for bringing this point to the fore, as I have never seen the Macpherson 'hunting' tartan with brown coloured yarn. Some of the older kilts within the Clan Macpherson, expecially those worn by Cluny, his extended family, and Macpherson Chieftains, do contain what appears to be a 'natural' coloured yarn, but perhaps these were areas that once were more white and became soiled through the years. I am not sure of this.

    I do like the overall look of the brown being added to the Macpherson 'hunting' tartan in place of the widely seen and adopted lighter grey, or white areas, next to the darker grey/black areas in the sett. I have not seen this specific colour combination of the dark grey and brown anywhere else before, and as far as I'm aware, this specific colour combination is not registered with the Scottish Tartans Authority. Very interesting nonetheless.

    Here are a few examples of older Macpherson 'hunting' kilts with an abundancy of the 'natural,' or beige colour (with the exception of the Macpherson of Pitmain tartan - shown in the third photo, far right - which contains larger amounts of blue and white, and other Macphersons that are obviously wearing the more common Macpherson 'hunting' tartan in the 'ancient' or 'modern' colours from Strathmore, Lochcarron, or House of Edgar.):







    Cheers,
    Last edited by creagdhubh; 8th May 12 at 10:07 AM.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    This is fantastic, Nick! Really wonderful. Congratulations and thanks to your whole team that put this together.

    ith:

  8. #8
    Join Date
    12th November 10
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    Nice effort. I have to point out, though, that the colors are wrong for the Carolina (States of) tartan. [sigh]
    Kenneth Mansfield
    NON OBLIVISCAR
    My tartan quilt: Austin, Campbell, Hamilton, MacBean, MacFarlane, MacLean, MacRae, Robertson, Sinclair (and counting)

  9. #9
    Join Date
    16th August 04
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    Quote Originally Posted by SlackerDrummer View Post
    Nice effort. I have to point out, though, that the colors are wrong for the Carolina (States of) tartan. [sigh]
    Then would you care to contact us to with details of what you believe the correct colours should be? It's easily fixed if it's wrong. Our source data mostly derives from the Scottish Tartans Authority, before its recording function was made redundant by the official Scottish Register of Tartans. So major errors usually derive from there. We're keen to correct wherever we can.

  10. #10
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    27th October 09
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    I think it's fabulous! And the yarn colours appear to be true, at least on my recently acquired Reproduction Colquhoun tartan.

    Is there any way you could allow the user to see a full-size image of the tartan instead of just a zoom window?

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