old tartans were "simple and earthy"

[OC Richard]

I was wondering about the tartan Liam Neeson wears in the film Rob Roy.



The television series Outlander and the film Braveheart have cemented D C Dalgleish's "reproduction" colour scheme, which he devised in 1949, in the public mind as to what 18th century and earlier tartans looked like.

The tartan in the film Rob Roy takes us to a time before those shows appeared, and in light of that it's interesting to see what sort of tartan they used.

I found a New York Times article about the tartan which included:

Sandy Powell, the costume designer for "Rob Roy," decided to steer clear of controversy over the MacGregor tartan. She devised her own "setts," or ginghamlike checks. "It was very difficult to find an original tartan dating back to the period that the director liked the looks of," she said, referring to Michael Caton-Jones, "and it was easier to make one up so it wouldn't be wrong. In that day and age, tartans didn't exist as we know them. The tartans were earthy, and designs were simple."

The "earthy" notion conjures Dalgleish's "reproduction" range, while the "simple design" notion is on all fours with the Allen Brother's ideas. Both notions of course post-date the period of the film.

(As an aside the buckle Liam Neeson wore, coloured silver and worn back-to-front, is the same buckle worn by two characters in Game Of Thrones, The Mountain and Ser Barristan, the latter having been modified.)

[davidlpope]

What stand out to me is that the Rob Roy tartan is a plain weave, instead of twill as it would have been.

As to design and colors, I've found that it is very difficult to convince people who are wrong of their error on this topic...

[figheadair]

I was wondering about the tartan Liam Neeson wears in the film Rob Roy.

I found a New York Times article about the tartan which included:

Sandy Powell, the costume designer for "Rob Roy," decided to steer clear of controversy over the MacGregor tartan. She devised her own "setts," or ginghamlike checks. "It was very difficult to find an original tartan dating back to the period that the director liked the looks of," she said, referring to Michael Caton-Jones, "and it was easier to make one up so it wouldn't be wrong. In that day and age, tartans didn't exist as we know them. The tartans were earthy, and designs were simple."

I was commissioned to provide historical tartan advice for the film and worked with Sandy Powell (she was also the costume designer for The Last Emperor and Last of the Mohicans). I showed her a number of specimens broadly contemporary with Roy Roy, including the so-called MacGregor of Glengyle, Roy Roy's branch of the clan. She loved all of them but unfortunately, she was overruled by the director.

I vividly remember her comment about the Deeside sett, that it was beautiful by she couldn’t use it because ‘the Director wouldn’t have Liam Neeson in pink’!

In the end they commission a new ‘traditional’ tartan Designed and woven by Gordon Covell of The Islay Woollen Mill. Of course, the resulting design and cloth was anything by traditional, especially for a man of Rob Roy’s status.

[OC Richard]

I was commissioned to provide historical tartan advice for the film and worked with Sandy Powell...I showed her a number of specimens broadly contemporary with Roy Roy...She loved all of them but unfortunately she was overruled by the director.

That's typical Hollywood, they hire expert consultants then overrule the advice they give!

Every film where a uniform is incorrect, where a doctor does something no doctor would do, where a firearm is used in a way that no-one familiar with that firearm would do there's an expert telling the director "that's not how it would be".

I was present at one of those times where the director actually listened to the experts. For the film The Onion Field they filmed a sequence that was supposed to take place at a Highland Games.

They hired several local Pipe Bands (including mine) and actual Highland Dancers etc to make the Games as realistic as possible.

But for the Highland Dancing competition they had hired an accordion player!! (They must have seen an Irish dance competition somewhere.)

The director was seated with a camera operator up on a crane for a crane shot of the Games, and a crowd of pipers and dancers began yelling up at him that a piper has to play for the Highland dancers! The director, to his credit, got rid of the accordion player (who still got paid of course) and an experienced dance piper took his place at the dance stage.

In any case yes for any film Rob Roy included there's an Art Director who in conjunction with the Director had established a palette for the film, and obviously none of the historical tartans matched that palette.

Doesn't surprise me that the Costumer loved them! Costume people love to study actual historical clothing and incorporate it into their designs.

[Pleater]

I always wince when I see one particular longsword team with the swords in their left hands.

Although I am kerry handed, people simply were not allowed to be left handed up to maybe a century ago.

Women would not go out of their front door bare headed and wearing an apron. My mother would always put on leather shoes, brush her hair and put on a head scarf, take off her cardigan and apron and put on a jacket then put her purse into a bag even if she was only going to the shop which was about seven doors away down the road. Very Jane Austen.

Having done a little research into costume myself, the amount of knitting in eras where it simply did not exist in that form, or at all, is annoying, and dressing characters in fabrics they would never have worn - either too poor or too rich - just scandalous.

Anne the Pleater

[Ninehostages]

The old dyes used before the Industrial Revolution that were derived from plants, sea shells and minerals (... and fixed with urine!) would have given old weavings a very different look. Synthetic chemical dyes have been around so long now that we take those bright, saturated colours like you see in a Royal Stewart or Buchanan tartan for granted as normal and traditional. They've only been around for a couple of hundred years but we've pretty much forgotten what the colours that are derived from nature even look like, anymore. Also, the wide colour palate available to today's weavers didn't exist back then either and the wild and wonderful combinations available now would have been beyond their wildest imaginings.

[figheadair]

The old dyes used before the Industrial Revolution that were derived from plants, sea shells and minerals (... and fixed with urine!) would have given old weavings a very different look. Synthetic chemical dyes have been around so long now that we take those bright, saturated colours like you see in a Royal Stewart or Buchanan tartan for granted as normal and traditional. They've only been around for a couple of hundred years but we've pretty much forgotten what the colours that are derived from nature even look like, anymore. Also, the wide colour palate available to today's weavers didn't exist back then either and the wild and wonderful combinations available now would have been beyond their wildest imaginings.

In your list of natural sources for dyes you missed out animal. Cochineal and Lac, both Shield Insects, were important sources of red in the 18th century. Urine was used in the extraction of indigotin (blue) dyes, principally Indigo and Woad, it is not a mordant used for fixing dyes.

Yes, artificial dyes can be bright; equally, they can be dull as in the Reproduction range. It is completely incorrect to say that the wide colour palate available to today's weavers didn't exist back then either and the wild and wonderful combinations available now would have been beyond their wildest imaginings. Almost every colour and shade, or ones very similar, were available from traditional natural dyes as this inexhaustive range shows.



There are original examples discussed in these papers An Unnamed late 18thCentury Fancy Plaid and A Joined Plaid dated 1748.

[OC Richard]

I

A wide range, yet all are quite restrained compared to the colours possible today.



I've seen "tartans" done in these very colours, happily I can't find any photos of such at the moment!

[Pleater]

A wide range, yet all are quite restrained compared to the colours possible today.



I've seen "tartans" done in these very colours, happily I can't find any photos of such at the moment!

That is the colour range available in man made yarns on the market in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in England, when I got my first knitting machine, and began to make tank tops. I could buy the yarn for 50p and sell the garment for a pound 50, but I got so many orders I put up the price the two pounds. Psychedelia was the in thing back then.
When I started to teach machine knitting I realised how very 'handed' people were, some of them having to use their right hand for everything, but those who were left handed in writing often showed 'dexterity' in both hands.
My mother's father was shot in the right arm at Mons in the Great War, and during convalescence was carefully tutored to do things left handed. He must have smiled, as he was by nature left handed - but he was almost caught out as he stuttered from being a child, and when 'allowed' to be left handed again, the problem vanished.
I did a little work with stage costumes, and the use of tea and coffee is common to make garments look right - and in quilting, if a ragbag of fabrics are put together they can be made to look more in sympathy with eachother by toning down the clashing colours. Older colours, if that is the right description, often go together more easily as they do not clash as much.
Colours such as shocking pink and the 'visible' colours used for safety clothing are very clear and not at all greyed - the opposite of camouflage colours.

Anne the Pleater

[figheadair]

A wide range, yet all are quite restrained compared to the colours possible today.



I've seen "tartans" done in these very colours, happily I can't find any photos of such at the moment!

As have I, but I was not referring to the horrendous modern practice of weaving tartans in a uniform colour range. That was never done with early tartans where colours were balanced to complement each other. Something approaching the majority of these colours can be produced with natural dyes but modern examples are rare and the majority of pieces used as reference points in discussions of natural dyes are 200-300 years old and so are usually, possibly always, subject to a degree of fading and loss of colour integrity.