State Tartans?

[OC Richard]

There is an official state tartan here in Connecticut, adopted by statute passed by our legislature.

When I was a member of our Saint Andrew's Society, we opposed the bill because the pattern is asymmetrical and did not follow any of the usual conventions on design.

Sorry to hear that. The fact is that many of the people designing tartans haven't steeped themselves in traditional tartans and don't have an eye for tartan design. You arm people with a tartan design program and a pile of money and you get a lot of tartans that don't look very tartanlike.

I've been studying tartans for 50 years but I'm still a neophyte! I'm still have much to learn. Compared to the actual experts I'm just another American guy with a tartan design program, but without the pile of money.

To a lesser extent the same thing happened with the West Virginia tartan. There was an ostensibly early 19th century Scottish-woven tartan which is very nice and had the state adopted that all would have been well.

But no! Some eejit had to meddle with it, adding "a black stripe to symbolise coal" and a white stripe to symbolise something else, I forgot. These tacked-on stripes alternated in a non-repeating (asymmetric) way simultaneously ruining

1) the historicity of the tartan

2) the beauty of the tartan

3) the symmetry of the tartan.

And that's what got woven, the spoiled tartan. Somebody needs to weave the real tartan someday.

[Jock Scot]

To my non artistic traditional eye, modern tartans and "modernised" tartans tend to look far too cluttered and just end up as a confusing jumble of lines and colours. Not a look that this traditional kilt and tartan admirer finds kind on the eye.