Everything Old is New Again (or) What Can You Learn by Looking Out the Window?

[jsrnephdoc]

People who read every post here may be puzzled by the attention to minutiae that permeates some discussions. I know my OWN rumination on things like that are compounded by my inability to REMEMBER some of the questions I've already asked or the answers I've received. But here's a funny (at least to me) story that deals with that.

When I last visited Scotland (Summer of 2023) I was surprised to see so-many gray/black tartans on display in Royal Mile shopwindows, contrasting with the relatively smaller prominence given to famous or family tartans. One explanation provided was that many of the shops made a sizable percentage of their income from the hire business, so stocking the new and proprietary "grayscale" patterns provided a way to reduce inventory costs as compared with trying to offer wedding parties anything approaching an inventory of even the most easily recognizable clan patterns. After all, I learned, many Scots would appear kilted in tartan in public perhaps no more than 2 or 3 times during their lifetimes—for graduation(s) or wedding(s) Still, I found some of those designs quite attractive, and when I got home to the USA I learned about a recently-designed "Lunar" tartan that had been registered in the 1970s, possibly designed by someone at the USA's Pendleton Woolen Mills, possibly commemorative of the Apollo Moon Missions a few years earlier. The source of that was learning that USA Kilts in Pennsylvania was commissioning a limited weaving of the tartan by House of Edgar. But, in short order I learned that the short HISTORY of that tartans was checkered. For example, planetary geologist Barb Tewksbury objected to the original tartan design because it contained a brown stripe, and from her day job she knew that "there's no brown on the moon."

If you visit the SRT website, you won't find the original design displayed, even though the registration date is still listed as 1977. Some shade of gray has replaced the brown. But, Barb wasn't done with her critique of just HOW the design was implemented in cloth, because the proprietor of USA Kilts was enamored of "marled" yarns, which can obscure borders between shades of gray, and she noted that there's no atmosphere on the moon to diffract light, so the contrast between light and dark is RAZOR sharp.

Barb had already made kilts for NASA members in the mid 20-teens, and had trained the folks who'd be going back to the moon in Project Artemis, and so I obtained swatches from USA Kilts and one from Barb, and the differences between the two were striking. I'm VERY fond of the kilt she made for me (from fabric woven by DC Dalgiesh, perhaps just several months before they exited the weaving business).

Last week I was spending some idle time watching the Artemis 2 astronauts aboard the Integrity Capsule begin to wrap around "to the Dark Side" (of the moon, not "The Force"). Two of them had been assigned to observe and photograph the never-before-seen lunar surface, and one of the pair, seeing a crater never before presented to human retinas, said something akin to "interesting; the rim of that crater has a 'brownish' tinge to it!" That got me opening my email client and asking Professor Tewksbury if she'd been watching the NASA feed.

"Of course," she replied, and acknowledged she'd heard the same comments about the scenery. She also provided me a few pictures of her and the Artemis 2 pilot on expedition in another dry and rocky place (southern New Mexico), where she and perhaps a half dozen other academic geologists taught them what to look for once some of them LANDED on the moon.

Of course, whether you're snapping and uploading pictures of wool or rock, beauty (and accuracy) are in the eye of the beholder, whether he/she is a Lunar Astronaut or a (perhaps colorbiind) 19th century tartan historian.

[BobF]

My own view might be that a tartan is not a textbook on lunar geology, and that perhaps a bit of artistic license is allowed.

My view of “lunar” tends to include some of the more whimsical and romantic aspects of the moon, influenced by 1930s cartoons, nineteenth century postcards and Christmas cards, green cheese, poetry, paper moons, mythology and paganism. My own encounters with the boundaries between art and science include being at college on the east end of Long Island studying marine biology and taking a Scientific Illustration class with renowned (I only found out later) illustrator Shirley Baty. With science I was used to things being right or wrong, black and white (take a class in Quantitative Chemical Analysis if you want to find out just how wrong you can be; it’s humbling). Art was new to me, there were shades of grey and no clear indication of when something was finished or still needed more work. Illustrations were supposed to be exact representations, but by necessity something of the artist was included. Then there was another time I went down to the Marine Station at midnight while it was snowing to see what the lights by the dock had attracted. There was a maelstrom of glass shrimp and small fish of several species. And then a small school of Loligo squid glided in. It was magical. At least until my girlfriend started calling from the car “it’s cold!” At some point I figured out that I was much more interested in the aesthetics of marine biology than the science of it.

Tartan itself is so full of twisted history wrapped in legend and lies that I wouldn’t begrudge a Lunar tartan having slightly less than scientific accuracy.

People who read every post here may be puzzled by the attention to minutiae that permeates some discussions. I know my OWN rumination on things like that are compounded by my inability to REMEMBER some of the questions I've already asked or the answers I've received. But here's a funny (at least to me) story that deals with that.

When I last visited Scotland (Summer of 2023) I was surprised to see so-many gray/black tartans on display in Royal Mile shopwindows, contrasting with the relatively smaller prominence given to famous or family tartans. One explanation provided was that many of the shops made a sizable percentage of their income from the hire business, so stocking the new and proprietary "grayscale" patterns provided a way to reduce inventory costs as compared with trying to offer wedding parties anything approaching an inventory of even the most easily recognizable clan patterns. After all, I learned, many Scots would appear kilted in tartan in public perhaps no more than 2 or 3 times during their lifetimes—for graduation(s) or wedding(s) Still, I found some of those designs quite attractive, and when I got home to the USA I learned about a recently-designed "Lunar" tartan that had been registered in the 1970s, possibly designed by someone at the USA's Pendleton Woolen Mills, possibly commemorative of the Apollo Moon Missions a few years earlier. The source of that was learning that USA Kilts in Pennsylvania was commissioning a limited weaving of the tartan by House of Edgar. But, in short order I learned that the short HISTORY of that tartans was checkered. For example, planetary geologist Barb Tewksbury objected to the original tartan design because it contained a brown stripe, and from her day job she knew that "there's no brown on the moon."

If you visit the SRT website, you won't find the original design displayed, even though the registration date is still listed as 1977. Some shade of gray has replaced the brown. But, Barb wasn't done with her critique of just HOW the design was implemented in cloth, because the proprietor of USA Kilts was enamored of "marled" yarns, which can obscure borders between shades of gray, and she noted that there's no atmosphere on the moon to diffract light, so the contrast between light and dark is RAZOR sharp.

Barb had already made kilts for NASA members in the mid 20-teens, and had trained the folks who'd be going back to the moon in Project Artemis, and so I obtained swatches from USA Kilts and one from Barb, and the differences between the two were striking. I'm VERY fond of the kilt she made for me (from fabric woven by DC Dalgiesh, perhaps just several months before they exited the weaving business).

Last week I was spending some idle time watching the Artemis 2 astronauts aboard the Integrity Capsule begin to wrap around "to the Dark Side" (of the moon, not "The Force"). Two of them had been assigned to observe and photograph the never-before-seen lunar surface, and one of the pair, seeing a crater never before presented to human retinas, said something akin to "interesting; the rim of that crater has a 'brownish' tinge to it!" That got me opening my email client and asking Professor Tewksbury if she'd been watching the NASA feed.

"Of course," she replied, and acknowledged she'd heard the same comments about the scenery. She also provided me a few pictures of her and the Artemis 2 pilot on expedition in another dry and rocky place (southern New Mexico), where she and perhaps a half dozen other academic geologists taught them what to look for once some of them LANDED on the moon.

Of course, whether you're snapping and uploading pictures of wool or rock, beauty (and accuracy) are in the eye of the beholder, whether he/she is a Lunar Astronaut or a (perhaps colorbiind) 19th century tartan historian.

[OC Richard]

When I last visited Scotland (Summer of 2023) I was surprised to see so-many gray/black tartans on display in Royal Mile shopwindows, contrasting with the relatively smaller prominence given to famous or family tartans.

One explanation provided was that many of the shops made a sizable percentage of their income from the hire business, so stocking the new and proprietary "grayscale" patterns provided a way to reduce inventory costs as compared with trying to offer wedding parties anything approaching an inventory of even the most easily recognizable clan patterns.

Just like with the US tuxedo rental business, the Scottish kilt hire business is subject to fads.

The greyscale tartan thing was a huge fad. I'm not sure when the fad kicked off, but I think the thing that started it was the tartan Grey Douglas which became the #1 hire tartan.

Grey versions of other Clan tartans followed, and as you mentioned many of the big hire shops designed and wove proprietary grey-scale tartans.

Then Isle of Skye became the #1 hire tartan and ushered in a fad for purple tartans.

Lastly Outlander had an impact on the hire business. The various pseudo-Clan tartans created for Outlander are all versions of MacKay in DC Dalgliesh's "reproduction" colours (later copied by Lochcarron who dubbed them "weathered colours").

Never you mind that the Dalgliesh brown & grey colour-scheme didn't appear until 200 years after the Battle of Culloden! The General Public now imagines that all 18th century tartans looked like that, and it's started a fad for earth-tone tartans.

Since the earlier fads never did quite die when new fads appeared we're left with a pastiche of grey-scale, purplish, and earth-tone hire tartans. That's what I saw when I visited hire shops in 2024.

Here we can see McCalls' hire tartans. They do high-quality UK-made stuff and have locations in various cities.

https://www.mccalls.co.uk/collection...Cha13TXMdPSflj