Tartan colours[edit]

Resolved
 – Covered in the colour section to the extent sources address this idea.

The colours used in a tartan's sett do have certain meanings, as does the amount of one colour in relation to other colours. I'm not very sure about many of them and would appreciate a list of the colours and the usual meaning, so as to be better able to read classic Clan settsn (and also weigh the claims made by the many "fictive" and fashion setts, chuckle chuckle... ;=} ).

I know there is one for landownership (brown or green?), one for coastal or Islay clans (blue, IIRC), yellow or gold--wealthy clan (e.g. Buchanan), black--clan with much ties to the clergy, there is one for livestock-wealth (was it green for the pasture or read for the meat?), military connections (red?)... What else are there, and could an authority on the topic pls. insert them in the Tartan article?

Thanks,

DJ Vollkasko
Temporary Newton Library
http://www.stillnewt.org/library
(User:212.149.48.43 11:08:03 8 February 2006)

The article now covers this, as entirely a modern thing. There is nothing like an established code of meanings for colours. Rather, the designer of the tartan asserts what inspiration they had for using particular colours, and this is best recorded at that tartans's individual entry in a tartan database. (Example: [1]).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I can't find any source anywhere for ideas like yellow meaning money, black meaning clergy, etc., etc. Modern tartans, however, frequently come with notes in the tartan databases like TartanRegister.gov.uk indicating why designers chose particular colours, but these are specific to a designer and are not a shared set of symbolic meanings. PS: The "16th century" section covers how red setts were more common in the eastern clans and green/blue ones in the west.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The legend of colours conveying a heraldic-style differencing system is addressed at the "Colour, palettes, and meaning" section in a footnote. In lots and lots and lots of reading, I have yet to encounter any claims that brown/green stood for land ownership, gold/yellow for wealth, black for clergy, etc., so the article is not specifically addressing them (no sources). I think the "gold for wealth" is a distortion of the idea that some of the brighter colours were more costly (due to imported dyestuffs; it's part of why they tended to be used as thin over-checks, but I haven't found a really clear source on this yet I have now, and have cited it.). "Black for clergy" can probably be traced to one or another alleged clerical tartans made up in the Vestiarium Scoticum being black and white (Scarlett 1990 mentioned this in passing - correction: it was Logan; see below). But at this point it's basically original research on my part; I would need a source more directly spelling this out. (I would like to be able to dispel this "colours have specific meanings" legend, but I can't find a source that even mentions it yet, beyond the old Victorian belief that it was a heraldic differencing system.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:00, 13 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some more on alleged clerical tartans: First , the church kept better records than anyone, so we would expect to find some evidence therein, but there is none. Rather the opposite: there are bans on the ministerial wearing of bright or "variant" coloured clothing, and the latter would surely include tartan. Not to mention tartan plaids themselves, by name, were banned several times by various church bodies. James Logan in the execrable The Scottish Gaël (1831), the first in a series of Victorian tartan books that veered between plagiarism and extreme imagination, listed a "Clergy" tartan in black, white, and grey, as if it were something of antiquity, but it is clearly based on an 1820+ fashion pattern by Wilsons of Bannockburn, which was named "Priest". Frank Adam in The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands (1908, and another work that is basically crap, even in the later edition heavily revised by Thomas Innes of Learney) listed a blue, black, and white "clerical" tartan with a made-up Gaelic name, but it is also clearly a rip-off of the Wilson's "fancy" pattern. (Source: James D. Scarlett, Tartan: The Highland Textile, 1990, pp. 10–11.) I'm not sure "ecclesiastical tartans" are enough of a pervasive tartan legend to bother covering in the WP article, which is already quite long. If so, I guess it could be a footnote under "Tartans for specific purposes". Though I'm skeptical anyone reads the footnotes, and more of them should be converted into main-body text, after the article is split up.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tartan etiquette[edit]

Resolved
 – The article has been restructured to put material in appropriate sections, including an "Etiquette" section.

This is part of the article, the last part of the 'clan tartans' section. I don't think it belongs there though. I wonder if the article could have a short 'tartan etiquette' section. That is what this paragraph appears to be. We would need some references though. What does anyone think?

Interestingly, a few tartans are now described as "general", i.e. acceptable for all to wear. The Black Watch tartan (see below) is the most well-known of these. Furthermore, the "Stewart Hunting Tartan" is also considered a general tartan by many; originally, as the name implies, a Stewart tartan, its use in several Highland regiments led to this broadening of its application. It remains, however, the most popular tartan in use by Stewart clan members. Finally, a few words should be said about the best known tartan of all: the famous Royal Stewart. Originally a variation on the Stewart of Galloway clan tartan, and as such a bona fide Stewart tartan, it was favoured by the Royal Family, wherefore many people consider it a Royal tartan. For this reason, it became a much sought-after tartan with the Highland regiments; and this, again, led to its present-day popularity, where it functions, for all practical purposes, as the Scottish Tartan, being used with everything from shortbread boxes to mugs and miniskirts. Queen Anne, foreseeing this development, remedied it once and for all by affirming that the British sovereign was to be considered clan chief of all Britons[citation needed] – English, Scots, Welsh and Irish – and that every (loyal) British subject therefore had the right to display her/his allegiance to the clan chief by wearing the clan tartan of the United Kingdom[citation needed]: the Royal Stewart.

--Celtus (talk) 05:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article's structure is better now, and there is an etiquette section. I cannot find any reliable (or even unreliable for that matter) sourcing for the Queen Anne claims. This sounds like yet another bit of misty legend.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of which, all this talk of "original" this and "originally" that is wrong. The royal Stewart pattern can only be dated to c. 1800, in records of Wilsons of Bannockburn. The idea that it's some pre-Jacobite "ancient" clan tartan is another bit of sourceless legendry.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tartan vs plaid[edit]

Resolved
 – Both terms are now explained properly in the lead section, and the article is at the name that is not ambiguous, as it should be.

Why is this article not called Plaid? I can tell you that no one in North America says "tartan." Explain that in Scotland "a plaid is a tartan cloth slung over the shoulder or a blanket." But don't call the article "tartan" because of that. Macarion (talk) 01:09, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a North American encyclopedia - it's a global one, see WP:WORLDVIEW. As such any local dialect of English can be used, but there are fairly strict rules about what dialect to use when the subject has a particularly close association with a particular country - see WP:ENGVAR. In this case, the article obviously has a close association with Scotland and so its title and contents should be in British English (and arguably Scottish English, but that's another matter...). Hence it's called "tartan". However if you go to the Plaid article you will get a link here as one of the options. Usually it works the other way - us non-Americans have to put up with North American usage for all sorts of articles on Wikipedia, so it's only fair to have a bit of give and take. Le Deluge (talk) 22:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree with Deluge that since the tartan is culturally associated with Scotland, this article should use the word tartan and not plaid. As much as I find it shocking that my coworker here in California does not know what a tartan is, still, the world does not revolve around American English or Wikipedia articles purely written in American English. Another word for small is wee and you can say grand for good. This is an opinion of someone who lived both in Scotland and U.S.A. ICE77 (talk) 07:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention the fact that the idea that Americans don't know what tartan means and don't use it is just wrong anyway. It tends to be used more for named (clan, family, district, organizational, etc.) setts, with generic "fashion" setts begin called plaid. Virtually no one in the US would speak of a "plaid kilt", even if they're also likely to use "plaid shirt" rather than "tartan shirt", but they know what you mean if you say "tartan shirt". The previous attempt to rename this page failed for good reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 8 July 2021[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is clear consensus that the article should not be moved to the proposed title, nor is there consensus regarding any of the other titles which were proposed. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jack Frost (talk) 05:57, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tartan → Scottish and Irish tartan – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. HLHJ (talk) 03:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Either we need to rename this article to something culture-specific like "Scottish and Irish tartan", or we need to include all the other cultures that use tartan/plaid/patterns made by varying the colour of both warp and weft. There's traditional plaid/tartan cloth in Japan, in India, in various parts of Africa, etc.. I'd suggest a rename. This article deals primarily with Scotland (and a bit of Ireland); the short description even ignores Ireland. The weaving technique is hardly restricted to these places. We need an article somewhere on these woven patterns generally; this article does not represent a worldwide view of the subject, which is fine but it should be named accordingly. Suggestions for other names for a general article are welcome.

I could go on. See Wiktionary:格子 for Japanese and Chinese terms for plaid. HLHJ (talk) 03:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No. "Tartan" is culture-specific, not a term for checked cloth patterns in general. Mutt Lunker (talk) 09:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, for the same reason as above. Tartan is specific to a culture; Scottish heritage is also celebrated outside Scotland in Tartan Day, and followers of the Scotland national sports team are known as the Tartan Army. Gabriella MNT (talk) 11:39, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so what do we call cloth non-Scottish-tradition cloth patterned by varying the colour of both warp and weft? I don't care what we call these articles, and I'm fine with having an article on Scottish tartan, I just also want a place to put information of such woven patterns in general, in all cultures. Sure, Scottish-tradition tartans are used outside Scotland. It seems inappropriate to shove information about kimono patterns into this article, though, or even gingham plaid. There is an article called Plaid (pattern), but it redirects here.
On English usage, "checked cloth" to me means cloth printed like a checkerboard, which is not the same as a woven pattern (Check (pattern) agrees with me on this, but also has information on Scottish tartan and keffiyeh). My OED gives both the Scotland-specific and general cloth-pattern definitions for each of "tartan" and "plaid", distinguishing them only by saying that plaid is twill-woven (I think American usage is just "plaid", regardless or whether tabby weave or twill). The link plaid is a disambig including things not necessarily Scottish, like plaid shirts.
Mutt Lunker, Gabriella MNT, do you have suggestions for where information on non-Scottish-tradition cloth patterned by varying the colour of both warp and weft should go, and what the article it goes in should be named? I want somewhere to put information on the weaving technique and how it's used around the world. HLHJ (talk) 13:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't. That it is hard to define the remit of your subject possibly indicates it isn't particularly a thing.
In Scotland, a plaid is specifically the item of clothing, which is usually but is not always tartan (e.g. can be Hodden grey, per this example), so mentioning "plaid" in your article would be an unnecessarily ambiguous choice and best avoided. Mutt Lunker (talk) 14:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Etymological detail: Originally, "plaid" was a word borrowed from the Gaelic, and referred to a type of blanket or garment (of any colour or pattern), and "tartan" was an English word (borrowed from the French) for tartan-pattern cloth. If you are making cloth by hand, striped and tartan patterns are a way to decorate cloth with little extra labour, so peasants around the world wore it, and rich people tended to shun it (see, for instance, Madras (cloth)). In the late 1600s and 1700s, England broke out of the Malthusian trap; from living on subsistence farming, it transitioned to an industrialized economy, with unprecedented wealth per capita.[2] This was largely driven by the automation of spinning and weaving, making England able to produce cloth very cheaply, and export it for great profit. So English people were on average richer and could also buy cloth much more cheaply.

Scotland, not so much. Scotland was still poor. English visitors at the time noted that people still spun by hand, wove with hand looms, and ground their grain with hand querns. They also wore cheap wool twill plaids, in striped and tartan patterns; the poorer people owned only a long shirt and a plaid, which served as a garment by day and a blanket at night. There were changeable regional fashions in patterns. The English did use striped and tartan cloth, but nowhere near as much, and often for things like mattress covers, where no-one would notice if it looked cheap. Tartan-pattern cloth became associated with Scots in both England and Scotland.

Then in the mid-1700s came the Highland Clearances, among other things. Scots were upset. There was political unrest and Jacobitism, which became associated with Scottish dress. In the Dress Act 1746, clothes that were considered typically Scottish were banned, including multicoloured plaids (the garments) and tartan-pattern cloth in most contexts. If you go to the article and read the text of the ban, you'll see that "plaid" is used for the garment, and "tartan" for a pattern. It was repealed in 1782, and in Victorian times tartans were systematized, given heraldic significance (largely by a couple of Jacobite pretenders) and became all the rage, especially after being adopted by the royal family. If I were making this up I'd make it more plausible.

Later, Americans came to use "plaid" as a synonym of "tartan", using both words to refer to both the pattern type and the Scots garments (this pattern-describing usage of "plaid" existed by the late 1930s [3]). Some Brits now do the same.

So it isn't hard to define the subject; the English vocabulary is just a bit awkwardly ambiguous (we have lots of articles on subjects with ambiguous English names). If I were describing, for instance, the mask-adjusting picture above, I'd say the child is wearing a tartan shirt and shorts (if speaking to a Brit), or a plaid shirt and shorts (if speaking to an American). I'd think it would be obvious from the context which sense of "tartan" or "plaid" I was using. If "List of clothing with plaid patterns" is a reasonable category, and we could call the garment in the image above a "plaid sari", than "plaid patterns" must be a thing that exists. I tend to agree with Mutt Lunker that "tartan patterns" would be less ambiguous, but obviously SnowFire would disagree. I suspect this is a transatlantic dialect disagreement. That's why I want input.

If this article is too Scottish/Irish focused then a new subsection could be added/the lead rewritten slightly to allow for tartan in other cultures to be added.
— LordHarris

The tartan article, which is already quite long, is almost entirely about Scotland, as the short description says. I think a rescope would make more sense.

"Tartan" is specifically a Scottish/Irish cultural thing, not a generic term for striped or plaid clothing.
— User:JIP

Unfortunately, it is both, as is "plaid". This can be independently verified with an etymological dictionary (including Wiktionary: Wiktionary:plaid#Noun, Wiktionary:tartan#Noun). HLHJ (talk) 18:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've only skimmed through the above as the greater part seems to have little pertinence to the subject of cloth patterns and much is factually inaccurate. I'd like to note that the attribution to me of the advocacy of the term "tartan patterns" for such an article, or that it is less ambiguous, is without basis. I'm not sure you should be stating SnowFire's view for them either. Mutt Lunker (talk) 19:00, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry to have misrepresented you, Mutt Lunker. Since you said:

In Scotland, a plaid is specifically the item of clothing, which is usually but is not always tartan (e.g. can be Hodden grey, per this example), so mentioning "plaid" in your article would be an unnecessarily ambiguous choice and best avoided.

I thought you were saying that "tartan" was less ambiguous than "plaid" for the cloth pattern, which I thought would logically imply that "tartan patterns" would be less ambiguous than "plaid patterns". As I think you said, patterns in plaids (garments) include but are not restricted to tartan. Clarification welcome. A quarter of an hour before your post, Snowfire did not object to my characterization of Snowfire's views (below), so at least I did a bit better there.
I'd appreciate knowing what portions of what I wrote are factually inaccurate. HLHJ (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just confirming that I'm an American as far as usages here. I think this proposal might be a case of cart-before-the-horse. If you think you can write a good article or list on plaid patterns / tartan patterns / "usage of striped patterns in clothing in general" from a global perspective, go for it (in Draft or User space if need be)! It very well might be worth a mention on Tartan (disambiguation) and in this article if created. But even if that article is created, I'd still be skeptical about moving this article - as the 1986 reference in the lede notes, "The words tartan and plaid have come to be used synonymously, particularly in North America. This usage is incorrect when referring to Scottish tartan." In other words, "tartan" has priority when referring to Scottish & Gaelic tartans and the culture associated with them. But we definitely shouldn't even consider moving it until the "pattern in general" article is created, else it be (discouraged) preemptive disambiguation. SnowFire (talk) 18:45, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, SnowFire. I'd be happy to make such an article. I do think that "tartan" is better for referring to the Scottish-tradition heraldic patterns. Obviously the preferred word used to describe, say, Madras (cloth) varies geographically. Maybe I should call it "double stripe", like "double ikat", just to sidestep the whole tomahto/tomayto (there's plahd/played for "plaid", too; I think "played" is the pronunciation more common in Scotland). And insert an etymology section. But I think I should probably let this discussion end first. HLHJ (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is about the issue you raised, the requested move. Don't complain if people come here to address the matter you raised. Your proposal having been roundly rejected, if you want people to engage in a discussion about something else, start a new discussion. As your new issue is more general and not about tartan specifically, this may not be the place discuss it; perhaps Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Textile Arts? Mutt Lunker (talk) 09:24, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a discussion of those cloths—it's a discussion of tartans—why are you asking us to go off topic?—blindlynx (talk) 13:37, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please, if you think I'm wrong, say why, or I'm unlikely to learn better
I don't think I've made myself clear. When I said "different types of cloth pattern", I meant tartan patterns, and possibly checkered patterns if someone feels they are not the same. I should have been less ambiguous. This is a discussion of the title of the article called "Tartan"; discussing the meanings of the word "tartan", one of which, I contend, is a pattern of cloth, seems relevant. If "tartan" does not mean this pattern of cloth, asking what term does describe the cloth seems reasonable, especially when there are dialect differences here, which i think is why we are arguing. I know you have both said that "tartan" is not a term used for cloth with warp and weft stripes, but you haven't said why (or why you think I'm factually incorrect). Blindlynx said that their opinion was supported by Wiktionary, and I've explained why this does not seem to me to be the case. I'll now additionally cite Webster, since he's out of copyright and American:

Checker Check"er (?), v.t. [imp. & p.p. Checkered (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Checkering.] [From OF. eschequier a chessboard, F. \'82chiquier. See Check, n., and cf. 3d Checker.]

1. To mark with small squares like a checkerboard, as by crossing stripes of different colors.
2. To variegate or diversify with different qualities, color, scenes, or events; esp., to subject to frequent alternations of prosterity and adversity.

Our minds are, as it were, checkered with truth and falsehood. Addison.

...

Tartan (?), n. [F. tiretane, linsey-woolsey, akin to Sp. tiritaña, a sort of thin silk; cf. Sp. tiritar, to shiver or shake with cold.]

Woolen cloth, checkered or crossbarred with narrow bands of various colors, much worn in the Highlands of Scotland; hence, any pattern of tartan; also, other material of a similar pattern.

...

Plaid (?), n. [Gael. plaide a blanket or plaid, contr. fr. peallaid a sheepskin, fr. peall a skin or hide. CF. Pillion.]

1. A rectangular garment or piece of cloth, usually made of the checkered material called tartan, but sometimes of plain gray, or gray with black stripes. It is worn by both sexes in Scotland.
2. Goods of any quality or material of the pattern of a plaid or tartan; a checkered cloth or pattern.

Plaid, a. Having a pattern or colors which resemble a Scotch plaid; checkered or marked with bars or stripes at right angles to one another; as, "plaid muslin".

Plaided, Plaid"ed, a.

1. Of the material of which plaids are made; tartan.

"In plaided vest." Wordsworth.

2. Wearing a plaid.
Campbell.

Plaiding Plaid"ing (?), n. Plaid cloth.
— [https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/673/pg673.txt

This seems to me to give three American names for the crossed-stripe woven patterns I am describing. All these names have additional meanings, none of them are unambiguous (with the possible exception of plaiding, which would probably not be accepted in British English). Can we agree that the words "tartan", "plaid", and "checkered" can (among other uses) reasonably be used in English to describe crossed-stripe cloth outside of the Scottish and Irish cultural traditions (e.g. "a tartan kimono")? Or can we agree on any other term?
Wikipedia has Tartan patterns and Plaid (pattern) redirecting here; would anyone object if I wrote, or at least drafted, a global, non-culture-specific article to be the target of these links, as SnowFire suggested? HLHJ (talk) 00:30, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Every definition of 'tartan' you have provided and what most editors here are arguing is that 'tartan' is specifically a pattern related to Scottish culture, therefor this page should not be moved. Whether this is an appropriate redirect for those pages is a different discussion. Maybe Check_(pattern) would be better?—blindlynx (talk) 03:41, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am not arguing that tartan is not a pattern related to Scottish culture, merely that that is not the word's only meaning. Webster's "other material of a similar pattern" seems to me to unambiguously be a definition that allows referring to that kimono as tartan. Check (pattern) might work for US usage, which does not distinguish between the pattern found on a checkerboard, with squares of two different colours alternating orthogonally, and the pattern found on gingham, with three different colours of squares. But in British usage, and in many other languages, the two are distinguished, and indeed the conceptual distinction is pretty clear. If there are two concepts, there should be two articles (I recently split an article that covered an HVAC system and a Quranic reference to a spring in heaven in a single article; imagine the categorization...). The British OED (which I have not quoted due to copyright) says "tartan" is a woolen cloth with this pattern, "especially" as worn in the Scottish highlands, or other cloth with the same pattern (they silk and velvet [!] as examples), or a Scottish plaid with a clan's heraldic pattern. The OED's definition of "chequer" does not admit the three-colour-square version, let alone a pattern with narrow rectangles. I'm not sure what Indian English uses. Ideally, we want a term which:
  • clearly distinguishes the crossed-stripe pattern from the checkerboard checker (eliminates "checkered", since Americans use it for both)
  • will not be seen as catachresic by readers from outside the United States (eliminates "checkered" and "plaid", since Brits use these words for other meanings)
  • will not be seen as catachresic by readers from inside the United States (eliminates "tartan" since Americans think this is Scotland-specific[4][5])
Etymologically, we could go with the oldest term. Or we could go with a descriptive term. So... woven cross-stripe? Double stripe, by parallel with double ikat? If no-one cares, then sure, this discussion is over, but I'm happy to hear to other views. HLHJ (talk) 23:58, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think we've established that there's opposition to the proposed move, there is opposition to discussing alternate terms here, and the discussion has apparently gotten TL;DR. HLHJ (talk) 23:58, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Follow-up (on internationalising)

(Aside from confusion of Scottish and Irish) one of the big flaws in the proposal above and of much of the reasoning througout the discussion is that the fact of modern-day worldwide use of tartan/plaid (terms which are now entirely adequately explained in the lead), and a bunch of photographic evidence of tartan and more often simple chequer-board pattern from around the world, tells nothing encyclopedic and historic. Of course tartan is all over the world, just as T-shirts and jeans are; modern manufacturers have a global market. This doesn't indicate that we need to devote space to presentation of information about Western informal dress in every society, nor do we need to do something like that for use of tartan everywhere. A few other quibbles: the Ghana picture doesn't illustrate anything related to tartan (the grid-like pattern on one cloth is a printed pattern, not woven, as the colours do not blend); checkerboard (dicing) is also not related to tartan but is a patchwork or printed pattern in which, again, colours do not blend (same goes for the modern "chequered kimono" image – it is an unrelated kind of textile to tartan); the two gingham examples are mis-described as three- and four-colour (they are both two-colour, which is definitionally true of the gingham pattern; if it's got three, it's tattersall); and "heraldic tartan" isn't a real term.

What would be of encyclopedic relevance would be evidence of use of tartan-style patterns outside Northwestern Europe in the pre-modern era. Of all the evidence presented above, the only thing useful is the 1780s Japanese woodcut. This inspired me to do some digging and we now have an "In other cultures" section with a "Japanese kōshi" subsection. It's a start, and we will probably need some additional subsections on use of similar cloth in other parts of the world without any clear connection to Scottish tartan. This requires source research, and a bunch of whining that the article is "too Scottish" isn't helpful. Our article is heavy on Scotland-related details because all the reliable source material is.

So, what historical but non-Scottish tartan/plaid use is our article missing?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One gap I can identify: coverage of Maasai shúkà (we have a little on it at Maasai people#Clothing). It is frequently in tartan patterns, almost emblematically so. The Maasai and the British were 19th-century allies for a time in various of the colonial-period wars. [6]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 07:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a subsection, Tartan#Maasai shúkà that covers this, but it's actually got more detail and sourcing than the corresponding Maasai people#Clothing, so at Talk:Maasai people I've suggested some merging or even a separate Shúkà article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, as noted in an earlier thread, there's a tartan tradition in Nazaré, Portugal. Need to find some sources on this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Image to use for this later: File:Museu dos Texteis - MUTEX 22.jpg – antique loom, with tartan cloth, in Museu dos Têxteis (Museum of Textiles) in Castelo Branco, Portugal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Commons appears to have zero images of the clothing style. From what I gather here, it's a style called escocês ('Scottish'), and was formerly commonly worn, along with a long sock-like cap ending in a tassel[7][8], by fishermen. What I can tell from other materials[9][10][11][12][13] is that it's a now-old folk costume (obsolescent after maybe the 1950s), and is not the common wear of the people today, but just put on (perhaps for the benefit of tourists) during a few saints day festivals and a carnival period starting in early January. A recent photo of fishermen in the area at work doesn't show them wearing tartan stuff[14]. I can't find any source to corrorborate the story posted above in another thread: "Legend has it this was from when the Scots landed there to help the Spanish and Portuguese defeat Napolean's army. The locals were so happy to see them or so taken with their garments that they fashioned lighter, more colorful versions." However, there appears to be a book that would be a good source, if it can be found and someone fluent in Portuguese can read it: de Mattos e Silva, Abilio Leal (1970). O Trajo da Nazaré. Lisbon: Editorial Astória. In the interim, I cannot find any usable colour images, and only a tiny handful of black and white ones (a couple of Edwardian-era postcards) that could be poached for Commons. Beyond that, I don't have anything further to report on Nazaré tartan. There's just not yet enough material to work with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, our lead image at Tatars shows 1870 Tatars of Kazan wearing tartan-patterened clothing, so we need to cover their use of this kind of cloth. Haven't found much; one blog showed examples and also said they're similar to patterns used by Finnic peoples.[15] The angel in Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus, with a tartan cloak, is generally held to be wearing "Tatar" cloth, but that meant Mongol cloth.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I got those integrated into the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:28, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
J. F. Campbell (1862), p. 366, wrote of tartan (and other) patterns being common in the South Sea Islands (though that's a vague term, and could refer to peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia, or Micronesia).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:34, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Still haven't found anything usable on this sub-subject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Potential source: Kuchler, Susan; Were, Graeme, eds. (2011). The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience. Routledge. ISBN 9781844720156. – An expensive academic volume.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Scarlett (2008) also observed tartan patterns in Bhutan. Newsome has an article on it here[16] and there may be enough material for a little subsection on it. There's some more on it here [17], but not a reliable source. Bhutanese weaving is often far more complex than tartan, but does include tartan patterns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:24, 11 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 20:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Found some Bhutan pics on Commons, so will add some to gallery. Google Scholar has papers that might go into it [18]; I have not trawled through them yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the terminology is mathra, pangtsi, bura, and kira, though I'm not sure yet which are terms for particular garments, for types of cloth, or for patterns. Found an entire book, substantial portions of which are online: Altmann, Karin (2015). Fabric of Life: Textile Arts in Bhutan – Culture, Tradition and Transformation. De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110428612 – via Google Books.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
From that book, I'm gathering that the generic term is bumthang, with various specific varieties having their own names (mathra, adha[ng] mathra, sethra, burai mathra, pangtsi; non-tartan linear stripes, like seersucker cloth, is called adha mathra). I can't really tell more, because the full relevant pages are not available from the GBooks preview.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There was enough material accessible online from that book (by browsing its full-accessible pages and by searching snippet-view in it) to write up a short subsection on mathra (the actual general term) tartans in Bhutan, so I did, with some Commons pics.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
South American tartans/plaids have been mentioned in a source or two. I went through both Weaving identities: Construction of dress and self in a highland Guatemala town by C. E. Hendrickson (1995), and Costume and Identity in Highland Ecuador by A. P. Rowe & L. Meisch (1998), and while I saw a few pictures that had a tartan-ish appearance, some were not true tartan but the product of supplementary weaving (colours crossing each other without blending), regular linear-striped cloth was more prevalent, and even more represented were complex abstract and figural patterns. Neither book addressed tartan/plaid patterns as a particular style in Guatemala or Ecuador at all, so it seems we have to look elsewhere in South America for an encyclopedically noteworthy tradition of weaving this kind of cloth.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Try Bolivia next. I did see a pic of handmade Bolivian poncho cloth (looked like cotton) that was a simple tartan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:02, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regimental tartans[edit]

Resolved
 – Section now exists, and the source conflict mentioned below has been dealt with.

We also need more coverage of the history of regimental and other military use. A good source for this will probably be The Uniforms & History of the Scottish Regiments, which I have obtained but not waded into yet. I also just re-obtained History of Highland Dress.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have about half of this new section drafted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:20, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Now about 4/5. It's been almost painful work, as The Uniforms & History of the Scottish Regiments in particular is very obtusely written. We also have an apparent source conflict, which I've spelled out here at a regiment article's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:41, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Update: The Tartan#Regimental tartans section now exists, and is comprehensive as I can make it with my available sources (and without bogging the reader down in regiment-naming and -merger trivia). I've tried to focus on tartan and tartans, not on units and their leaders.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:33, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The source conflict mentioned above has not been resolved yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to be dealt with now. Two known sources versus an unknown conflicting one, so we're going with the two known ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:17, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fencible regiments

Moved to Talk:Regimental tartan § Fencible regiments

Covering their tartans may be difficult, as sourcing is thin. One bit to use later: "The origins of the MacDonald (Clan Donald) tartan are equally vague [with that of Cameron of Erracht] but the similarity between the two, and also the MacDonell of Glengarry, suggests that the latter two were also military, probably Fencible, tartans, a theory supported by MacDonell of Glengarry in a letter in which he refers to the tartan being worn by his regiment." This is from (already cited elsewhere in the regimental section): Eslea MacDonald, Peter (January 2012). "The Original Cameron of Erracht Cloth?" (PDF). ScottishTartans.co.uk. Retrieved 24 June 2023.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting of article[edit]

I think the clan and regimental tartans sections are long and developed enough to consider splitting out into side articles. The whole article is still shorter than plenty of other articles (e.g. on countries, on major politicians and other public figures, etc.) – it's not even in the top 500 largest WP articles – but it is getting pretty long. Leaving behind a WP:SUMMARY-style précis of each will take a fair amount of careful editing, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The whole set of history sections might actually be splittable as History of tartan, much as Silk is now split off to History of silk and a lot of additional side articles. For now, I prefer to work on sourcing as much material as possible. I'm basically taking a working vacation and doing source-research on tartan full time until I run out of steam. We can re-arrange it later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:10, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Separate articles that I think can be spun off, so far:

I think also some stubs can be created:

That said, I – being the only one doing any of this work at all – do not want to do this splitting any time soon, as I'm still sourcing the material on a daily basis, and doing so would become vastly more difficult if the work were spread across half a dozen or more separate articles; often a single source page provides material relevant to three or more sections of the WP article. (Given that I just ordered 10+ more source books, this is going to take a while.) Just the splitting itself is going to be a tremendous job, because all the source citations will have to be repaired on a page-by-page basis, and then the material has to be summarized (sometimes multiple times, e.g. clan and regimental tartans have to be differently summarized for the main article and for the history article, with differing levels of detail and a different focus/intent). Per WP:HASTE (and WP:IAR for that matter), there is no hurry, and this article is still smaller than a bunch of others across many topics, like List of Glagolitic manuscripts, ‎List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland, Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 6), ‎List of Hindi songs recorded by Asha Bhosle, ‎Municipal history of Quebec, 1922 regnal list of Ethiopia, List of battles by geographic location, List of Gunsmoke (TV series) episodes, ‎List of common misconceptions, ‎Opinion polling for the 2023 Spanish general election, ‎List of 2021–22 NBA season transactions, ‎2022 in science (many of them rote lists that are barely encyclopedic). If they aren't breaking anything, then neither is Tartan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC); updated 01:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This has gotten unwieldy enough yet also well-developed enough to start splitting it now. I'm starting with the "Regimental tartans" section, then will do "Clan tartans", then probably "History of tartan". This will take a lot of work since all the citations will have to be repaired, new leads written, WP:SUMMARY material left behind in its place, etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:43, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Regimental tartan is now live. I will next work on compressing Tartan#Regimental tartans to a concise WP:SUMMARY.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:13, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done with the post-split cleanup in that section. It could be compressed even further, but I'll wait until splitting off of History of tartan and see how long that turns out (that side article will need its own summary of regimental tartans, probably the text of that section here now, to be replaced in turn by an even shorter version).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Next working on splitting out a Tartan weaving and design article, to encompass the current "#Weaving construction", "#Styles and design principles", and "#Colour, palettes, and meaning" sections. Will do Clan tartan after that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've got most of the Tartan design and weaving article split and "massaged" into shape at User:SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tartan design and weaving, but still need to build a lead section for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Still working on it (about 95% done, but there are a few more tidbits in the main article that could move into it). Have some pressing "real life" stuff to deal with this week.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:14, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't forgotten about it; just got side-tracked for a while by an off-site project.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:24, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And then an on-site one. Still working on this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Additional sources[edit]

Found these, but only the abstracts are available for free:

Papers available in full-text:

Books to check out:

Sources to probably skip:

Extended content
  • Moore, Rachel (1995). The Semiotics of Tartan (MA). University of Central England. – Does not seem to be online, and probably not useful as a source anyway, since it's just a master's thesis.
  • Telfer Dunbar, John (1977). Highland Costume. William Blackwood & Sons. – Skip this one; it's just a 62-page booklet.
  • Zaczek, Iain (2001). World Tartans. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9780760725894. – This one is just another tartan flip-book of clan and district tartans, that also includles US, Canadian, Australian, etc. entries. I don't think it goes into historical use of tartan-style cloth in world cultures, so it is unlikely to be of use for this article.
  • Scarlett, James D. (1972). Tartans of Scotland. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 978-0718819309. – This appears to be another flip-book of clan tartan images, like Bain's guide; probably of no use for this article.
  • Urquhart, Blair, ed. (1998). Tartans: The New Compact Study Guide and Identifier. London: Apple Books. ISBN 9781850764991. – This might be the newest edition of Urquhart; I'll have to check. This [35] seem to be the hardback edition from the same year, presumably with the same text. As a "flip book" of clans and tartans, I don't see much use for it at this article, though.
  • Phillips, Charles (2005). Tartan: An Illustrated Directory. London: Southwater. ISBN 9781844761555. –Another tartans flip-book, probably not useful here.
  • Zaczek, Iain (2000) [1998]. Clans & Tartans of Scotland. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9780760720745. – Another clan tartans flip-book, probably useless for this article.
  • Zaczek, Iain; Mair, Jacqui (2001). The Book of Scottish Clans. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9780760725900. – Ditto.
  • Munro, R. W. (1977). Highland Clans and Tartans. London: Octopus Books. ISBN 9781850520771. – Ditto.
  • Costantino, Maria (2010) [2003]. Handbook of Clans & Tartans of Scotland. Bideford, Devon: Kerswell Farm. ISBN 9781906239565.
  • Scottish Tartans Authority (2017) [2014]. Clans and Tartans: Traditional Scottish Tartans. Glasgow: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780008251093. – Ditto.
  • McNab, Christopher (2010). Clans & Tartans of Scotland & Ireland. Lomond Books / Scottish Tartans World Register. ISBN 9781842042496. – Ditto, and giving imprimatur to industry-created "Irish tartans" makes the reliability suspect, despite the publisher.
  • Pickels, Dwayne E. (1997). Scottish Clans and Tartans. Chelsea House. - Yet another clan tartans flip-book of dubious use for this article.
  • Grant, James; Thompson, J. Charles (1992). Scottish Tartans in Full Color. New York: Dover. ISBN 9780486270463. – Ditto.
  • Davis, Jenni; Bold, Alan. Scottish Clans & Tartans: The Pitkin Guide. Norwich: Jarrold Pub. ISBN 9781841650517. – Ditto.
  • Grimble, Ian (2013). Scottish Clans & Tartans. Broxburn: Lomond Books. ISBN 9781842043417. – Ditto.
  • Innes of Learney, Thomas (1983). The Scottish Tartans: Histories of the Clans, Chiefs' Arms, and Clansmen's Badges. Stirling: Johnson & Bacon. – Ditto.
  • Grant, Neil (2000). Scottish Clans & Tartans. London: Hamlyn. ISBN 9780600597766. – Ditto.
  • MacLean, Charles (1998) [1995]. The Lomond Pocket Book of Clans and Tartans. Lomond Books. ISBN 9780947782559. – Ditto.
  • MacLean, Charles (1990). The Clan Almanac: A Complete Guide to Scottish Family Names. Moffat: Lochar. ISBN 9780948403392. – Ditto.
  • Scottish Clans & Tartans: History of Each Clan and Full List of Septs. New York: Dorset. 1991. ISBN 9780880297240. – Ditto.
  • Martine, Roderick; Pottinger, Don (1992). Scottish Clan and Family Names: Their Arms, Origins, and Tartans (New ed.). Edinburgh: Mainstream. – Ditto.
  • Grant, Neil (1998). Clans and Tartans of Scotland. Hertfordshire: Regency House. ISBN 9781853614651. – Ditto. (There's a 2000 edition, ISNB 9781585740949, but I doubt it's different (probably just hardcover vs. softcover.)
  • The Scottish Clans and Their Tartans, with Notes. Edinburgh/London: W. & A. K. Johnston. c. 1900. – Yet another clan-tartans book. And old enough it has to be treated as a primary source.
  • Martine, Roddy (2004) [1987]. Scottish Clans and Famliy Names: Their Arms, Origins and Tartans (New ed.). Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 9781840189841. – Another clan tartans flip-book; can't see any use for that at this article.
  • Martine, Roddy (2022). Clans and Tartans of Scotland. Birlinn. ISBN 9781780277745. – Ditto.
  • Grimble, Ian (2002) [1977]. Scottish Clans & Tartans: 150 tartans illustrated in full colour. Book Sales Inc. ISBN 9780785815082. – Yet another clan tartans flip-book. Don't need this for this article.
  • Phillips, Charles (2005). Tartan: An Illustrated Directory. Wigston, Leicestershire: Anness Publishing. ISBN 9781844761555. – Sounds like another flip-book of clan tartans.
  • Ralph-Lewis, Brenda (2023). Tartans: From Scottish Clans to Canadian Provinces. Amber Books. ISBN 9781838863227. – Sounds like a "coffee table book", and seems (from its blurb) to devote a lot of material to US and Canadian designs; I'm skipping this one.
  • Ralph-Lewis, Brenda (2004). Tartans: Over 300 historic and modern tartans from around the world. Chartwell. ISBN 9780785818793. – Yet another tartan flip-book.
  • Mackay, James (2008). Clans & Tartans of Scotland & Ireland. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9781435109148. – Ditto. And just the fact that it takes "Irish tartans" seriously, despite them being wholly a product of the industry for marketing to Irish-Americans, with no connection to actual Irish tradition, makes it a suspect source.
  • Smith, Philip D., Jr. (2019) [1986]. Tartan For Me! Suggested Tartans for Scottish, Scotch-Irish, Irish, and North American Surnames with Lists of Clan, Family, and District Tartans (9th expanded ed.). Heritage Books. ISBN 9780788452703.((cite book)): CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) – Same comment as above; this is clearly pandering to and being continually updated for bogus "Irish tartans" being churned out for Americans; won't have anything useful for a historical WP article. And it's expensive anyway. (Seems to originally have been titled Tartans for the Irish! Suggested Tartans for Irish and Ulster Scots Names, though that might actualy be a largely redundant separate book.) The only use I can think of for this is for eventual articles on non-Scottish tartans, since it covers Welsh, Manx, Cornish, etc.
  • Fulton, Alexander. Scotland and Her Tartans: The Romantic Heritage of the Scottish Clans and Families. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 9780340572085. – Yet another clan tartans index; can't see this being useful.
  • Stewart, Jude (2015). Patternalia: An Unconventional History of Polka Dots, Stripes, Plaid, Camouflage, & Other Graphic Patterns. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781632861085. – This looks pretty thin on "history", versus pattern terminology.
  • Richardson, Catherine, ed. (2004). Clothing Culture, 1350–1650. Routledge. ISBN 9781138273542. – Sounded promising (despite being a very expensive academic volume), but doesn't seem to mention tartan at all.
  • Dobbs, S. P., ed. (2006) [2005]. The Clothing Workers of Great Britain. "Studies in Economic and Political Science" series. Routledge. ISBN 9781138865037. – Possible this has some information on English woollen mills producing competitive tartan, but I'm doing going to buy it to find out.
  • Rose, Clare; Richmond, Vivienne, eds. (2011). Clothing, Society and Culture in Nineteenth-Century England. Routledge. ISBN 9781138751880. 3 vols. – Ditto.
  • Toplis, Alison, ed. (2011). The Clothing Trade in Provincial England, 1800–1850. Routledge. ISBN 9781138664449. – Ditto.
  • Thanhauser, Sofi (2023). Worn: A People's History of Clothing. Vintage. ISBN 978-0525566731. – Has a chapter on woollen history, but unknown if it addresses tartan.
  • Postrel, Virginia (2021). The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1541617629. – May or may not cover tartan.
  • St. Clair, Kassia (2021). The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History. Liveright. ISBN 978-1631499012. – Ditto.
  • Finlay, Victoria (2022). Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World. Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1639363902. – Seems very ecclectic and may not have relevant content.
  • Hunter, Clare (2020). Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-1419747656. – May be more about sewing and needlepoint than weaving.
  • Butler Greenfield, Amy (2006). A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire. Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0060522766. – Entire book on the history of cochineal; not terribly relevant here, but might be good for improving enc. coverage of that dye.
  • Thompson Ford, Richard (2022). Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1501180088. – Exact content unknown; might have material on the evolution of Highland dress, but I doubt it (look for detailed reviews).
  • Edwards, Lydia (2021) [2017]. How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 21st Century (2nd revised ed.). Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1350172210. – Might be of some relevance in interpreting dresses in old portraits
  • Harrold, Robert (1978). Folk Costumes of the World. London: Blandford Press. – Does have a segment on Highland dress, but this tertiary source is unlikely to contain anything not already found in better, secondary sources above.
  • Betker, Katelyn Larissa (August 2016). Fabricating Gender Identity: Analyzing the Evolution of the Highland Kilt and Tartan (MA). Saskatchewan: University of Regina. – Very weak masters thesis; its central theme that Highland dress has been gendered, since before its spread from the Highlands, is correct; but in detail, it is a gender-politics polemic, and contains multiple factual errors on almost every page (probably because it is mostly lacking in quality source material).

On the Scottish Tartans Museum, which needs its own article:

See also:

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 18:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sources on ancient samples, and history of cloth

Our article at Tarim mummies says "Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, discusses similarities between it and fragments recovered from salt mines associated with the Hallstatt culture." But it doesn't cite Barber's own book for this, instead citing some paywalled paper. Weird. Anyway, this book is probably worth reviewing for details on the cloth. We've mentioned her briefly (as cited by Banks & de La Chapelle). This is the book:

An NYT article [36] based on Wayland Barber's stuff says: "Tracing the origin of plaid cloth to Anatolia and the Caucasus, the steppe area north of the Black Sea, her conclusion is: 'Starting from the general vicinity of the Caucasus, one group went west, the other east.'" So, she's apparently got some detailed analysis on the spread of early tartan-type cloth, which presumably includes other pre-medieval finds than the ones we're mentioning already. A different NYT article (May 1996) mentions her work again: "Dr. Elizabeth J. W. Barber, a linguist and archeologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the author of Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton University Press, 1991), said that plaid twills had first been discovered in the ruins of Troy, from about 2600 B.C., but had not been common in the Bronze Age." It also says that material (including by Victor H. Mair) relating the Tarim mummies was published in the then-current issue of [37]

A Guardian article[38] says: "Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber says in her new book, The Mummies of Urumchi, that the woollen plaids discovered on the mummies could only have been woven on warp-weighted looms, which originated in Europe via the Middle East."

Wayland Barber has another book of probable interest here, but this one is a more expensive academic volume:

And other that could have something relevant in it:

Also: "University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Irene Good, a specialist in early Eurasian textiles" apparently analyzed some of the cloth, and may have published something separately. Another news quote about her, from 1996: " Irene Good, a specialist in textile archeology at the Pennsylvania museum, said that the plaid fabric was 'virtually identical stylistically and technically to textile fragments' found in Austria and Germany at sites from a somewhat later period, about 700 B.C." [39] It would be good to find her publications.

Dunbar (1979), pp. 48–49, says: The early textiles to be found in Scotland have been well described by Audrey S. Henshall in papers published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1951. The actual specimens date from the Romano-British period to the seventeenth century and are to be seen in the Scottish National Museum of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. This means there are extant samples between the "Falkirk tartan" and the "Glen Affic tartan" that our article is not accounting for. Might take some work to track down Henshall's articles, as Dunbar did not cite them in detail. He quotes from one, but not specify which, nor provide the estimated date of the sample being described, so it's presently useless for our article.

See also:

Newsome (in one of his weaker, more introductory articles) says "Tartan has been found on mummies in Kazakhstan from 2000 BC", but doesn't provide any further detail [40]. Scottish Register of Tartans provides a reconstruction of what the tartan would have looked like originally [41], also without details. I'm not sure yet where this came from and have to hope that Wayland Barber's book covers it.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC), rev'd. 13:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Term "Highland Revival period"[edit]

Resolved
 – Worked it in.

P. E. MacDonald uses this term fairly often, though with exact-date definitions that vary a little. "The years 1780-1840 are known as the Highland Revival period." [42] and "There are no known examples of Highland Revival clothing being retrospective, they are stylistically all contemporary with the fashion of the time c.1780-1840." [43], versus "In costume terms the Highland Revival refers to the period c1782-1837 in which, as the name suggests, there was a revival of interest in, and wearing of, Highland Dress following the Act Repealing the Proscription of Highland Dress in 1782." [44] (1837 was the beginning of Victoria's reign.)

Anyway, not sure whether to integrate it here at all or put it in Highland dress.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:26, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I integrated this briefly at the top of the Georgian section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tarim mummies factoid[edit]

An anon pasted in the following (kind of in mid-sentence):

however, it is believed that the practice and use of coloured wool was imported through migration, as scientists have said, clothes of wool, felt and leather were unusual for the region [1].

References

  1. ^ https://www.livescience.com/tarim-mummies-origins-uncovered

This may be correct, but it's off-topic for this article (especially for it's lead section!), so I have removed it. If this source is good, it's probably something to include at Tarim mummies, and I'm making note of it here for that reason. If someone else doesn't get around to examining this and, if appropriate, including something about it over there, then I probably will at some point. Maybe something about this could be in the history section here, but this article is already over-long. (See other section about that, and splitting progress.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kirkin' o' the tartan[edit]

We have an article on this now, so should integrate mention of it in the 20th-century+ section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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