Highland Dress Catalogs

[OC Richard]

One of the interesting things to trace in these catalogues are the tartans.

The Kilt: A Manual of Scottish National Dress (1914) makes no mention of tartan colourings or dyes.

Leckie Graham 1909, in their list of Fine Saxony and Heavy Saxony tartans (42 tartans each) doesn't mention alternative colourings.

Forsyth c1930 says
"The most recent and important development has been the return to the authentic colourings of the Original Tartans...By means of a new and perfected process...the beautiful soft colourings of the Old and Rare Tartans were reproduced faithfully...To this movement forward Forsyth's gave full support from the beginning..."

Andersons 1936 says
"it has now become possible to reproduce with a certain new process the old light and delicate shades yielded by the vegetable dyes which often disclose unsuspected beauties in the design of tartans which have appeared commonplace when manufactured with ordinary aniline dyes."

In another place they refer to this as "vegetable colourings".

Rowans 1938 says
"Rowan Kilts to-day are tailored from Tartans which in colour and texture are true reproductions of the Tartans of a hundred and more years ago...The ancient colourings throw up the setting and give to the tartan a soft and mellow appearance..."

Though all this suggests that "vegetable colourings" were new in the 1930s, this illustration certainly appears to show those colours.



We're on much firmer ground as to when the colour-scheme Lochcarron calls "weathered colours" first appeared.







So Dalgliesh introduced their "reproduction colours" in the late 1940s, which at some point was copied wholesale by Lochcarron who dubbed it "weathered colours" (bottom left).

(Beware that bottom right, House of Edgar's "muted colours", is a different tartan, having the green and blue stripes reversed.)

[Troglodyte]

[QUOTE=OC Richard;1413080]

Andersons 1936 says
"it has now become possible to reproduce with a certain new process the old light and delicate shades yielded by the vegetable dyes which often disclose unsuspected beauties in the design of tartans which have appeared commonplace when manufactured with ordinary aniline dyes."

Here is an example of that:

Attachment 44605

This shows the Wilsons of Bannockburn c1830s version overlaid with a 1950s Lochcaron weaving of the same clan tartan that was made into a kilt by Wm Andersons.

[figheadair]

[QUOTE=Troglodyte;1413088]

Andersons 1936 says
"it has now become possible to reproduce with a certain new process the old light and delicate shades yielded by the vegetable dyes which often disclose unsuspected beauties in the design of tartans which have appeared commonplace when manufactured with ordinary aniline dyes."

Here is an example of that:

Attachment 44605

This shows the Wilsons of Bannockburn c1830s version overlaid with a 1950s Lochcaron weaving of the same clan tartan that was made into a kilt by Wm Andersons.

Houston, we have a problem.

[figheadair]

The suffix 'ancient' appears in Forsyth's 1907 catalogue but there is refers to instances where there the older tartan and they use the term to differentiate it from the standard one.