Selecting the “right” tartan version

[figheadair]

I’m looking for guidance/collective wisdom on how to select the “right” tartan from amongst the various versions available.

I am specifically concerned with Clan Hamilton. The Tartan Registry shows three versions (Hamilton, Hamilton hunting, Hamilton green hunting). If I go to someplace like USA Kilts, they list twelve different variants!

Some specific questions:

- Are hunting versions of a tartan appropriate for any occasion - or should they be reserved for “casual” attire?

- Is there a provenance for various alternates (like “ancient”, “modern”, or “muted”) - or are they just variations created by different weavers?

I want to try to stay “authentic” but I definitely have some personal preferences among the various options that I’ve encountered (and I’m sure there are more!). I’m just looking for some “best practice” when it comes to choosing.

Just to be clear, the Hamilton Green Hunting and the Hamilton Hunting are essentially the same tartan. Arguably, the latter is incorrect as it deviates from the original red sett.

In terms of which, it’s down to personal preference. As McMurdo has noted, the red sett in Modern Colours is the oldest version.

[OC Richard]

Excellent article as always Peter!

Staying with the major commercial offerings, as best I can understand the modern colours are the chemical-dye versions of the traditional colours, though they went overboard with the vividness and/or darkness of the colours. Red is a pure scarlet-red while green and blue can be quite dark.

The colour-scheme now called ancient colours makes red a red-orange while green and blue are pastels. Catalogues from the 1930s call the scheme "vegetable colourings" and claim they reproduce how tartans looked prior to the invention of chemical dyes. One gets the sense that the vegetable colourings scheme was recent and popular.

The earliest suggestion I've seen of vegetable colourings is in this 1909 catalogue illustration:



Here's the "story" of D C Dalgliesh's introduction of the colour-scheme they called "reproduction" colours. And quite a story it is!



Since this invaluable relic of the '45 has never come to light, the above story has the ring of a marketing scheme.

The historian in me rejects the statement about the relic telling us what tartan was like "in 1745 and before" due to

1) there was no systematic excavation so the 1745 date is mere supposition

2) evidence from one point in time can only tell us about that period; inferring that the same situation existed prior to that period is irresponsible.

In any case Dalgliesh's new "reproduction" colour-scheme, introduced AFAIK in the late 1940s, red is muted, green is brown, and blue is grey.

Lochcarron copied it wholesale and dubbed it weathered colours.

Then there's House Of Edgar's muted colours in which red is claret, green is olive, and blue is a lovely cobalt.

Here's MacDonald in all four of these colour schemes



About Hamilton, it's one of several three-equal-stripe tartans introduced by the Allen brothers in their book Vestiarium Scoticum, here are four of them:

[figheadair]

Excellent article as always Peter!

Richard, thank you. Newly (today) revised and updated - The Use of Colour in Tartan.

[OC Richard]

I was just looking through

The Kilt: A Manual of Scottish National Dress
Loudon MacQueen Douglas FRSE, FSA Scot.
1914

and I see no mention of any alternate colour-schemes, only a mention of weight, "Superfine" being indicated for Levee Dress.

BTW he consistently uses "vest" (the word "waistcoat" does not appear) while catalogues from the 1930s use the two words interchangeably. Thus the concept that "vest" in an American coinage is unfounded. I do wonder when the meaning of "vest" shifted in Scotland. (It's said, in linguistics, that a language seldom has two words of identical meaning for very long; one or the other will shift its meaning.)