mourning dress

[davidlpope]

Thank you, David. Jamie referred to "funeral" tartans in a couple of his other writings, but I never asked him which tartans he was referring to. Macfarlane was apparently one of them and you give a Stewart as another. I know there are no tartans in the Wilson's swatch book at Moy that could be described as funeral. Can the OP or others provide us with more names?

A search of the STA website for the term "mourning" turned up only two: Stewart and Menzies. Menzies looks like it may have been a late adoption.

A search on the "House of Tartan" website tartan finder (which allows you to exclude colors that are not in the tartan you are looking for, as well as search for colors that are in the sett) yielded the following tartans that are all black and white. I have omitted those that are clearly newly created fashion tartans.

1126 Stewart Mourning
1229 MacPhee MacFee or MacIvor
1244 Menzies B/W
1245 Scott
1246 Erskine B/W or Ramsay
1247 Stewart Mourning
1250 Ogilvy B/W
1251 MacFarlane B/W or Lendrum
1252 MacPhee (B&W)
1253 Shepherd
1823 Clergy (Logan)
1824 MacLean Black & White
1825 Scott
1826 Scott (Sir Walter Scott)
1828 MacLeod Black & White

I don't know think we can say that these were all designed as "mourning" tartans, but I doubt that their stark black/ white color palettes are purely chance, either...

Cordially,

David