Tartan: A Brief History

In honor of Tartan Day on March 9, we thought it would be fun to share a bit about the history of this iconic cloth. The following is excerpted from the article "Tartan" by K. Rose James from the Spring 2024 issue. To learn more about the history of tartan, make sure to check out the full article in the issue here.

Tartan. The word evokes romantic images of rocky cliffs, heather-strewn valleys, clans and warriors, punk rock, and school uniforms. At its core, tartan is any fabric woven with a simple “two-over-two” twill, often written as 2 /2 twill, with stripes in warp and weft. It’s the overlap of these stripes that causes tartan’s trademark checkered look. The plaid has endless variations and myriad conflicting cultural connotations. Tartan has evolved from basic checks to a potent symbol of region, rebellion, and history.

It is difficult to pinpoint the first Scottish tartan, as its earliest origins are meshed with legend. The title is often given to a fragment of cloth known as the Falkirk Tartan, from the third century BCE, discovered in the Falkirk District of Scotland. It has a pattern of small simple checks of dark and light brown shades, likely dyed using local plantstuffs. In truth, a simple woolen check was aesthetically pleasing, weather-resistant (thanks to wool’s warmth and water-resistant properties), practical, and relatively simple to create by a home weaver. Despite its recognition as the “first tartan,” the Falkirk fragment is like Bronze Age cloth scraps discovered in Scandinavian countries. Even some mummies found in the Taklamakan Desert in China’s Xinjiang province were wearing brown, blue, and green twill-woven plaid not dissimilar to Scottish tartan.

Early tartan cloth was woven on upright, warp-weighted looms. Warp threads were fixed on a wooden frame, bundled, and tied to weights at the base that held them under tension for weaving. Tartan and Highland dress as we know it today came into prominence in Scotland in the sixteenth century. While everyday items were produced at home, by the sixteenth century, weaving tartans was a lucrative rural business. Professional weavers traveled from community to community to set up their looms and weave tartans on commission. Generally, local customers would provide their own home-dyed yarn to the weaver. This tradition of distinct local dyes used by professional weavers was likely one of the origins of clan or regional tartan colors.

This print from the book Costumes of All Nations by Albert Kretschmer and Dr. Carl Rohrbach, published in 1888, purports to show the national dress of Scotland around the year 1700. Illustration by Albert Kretschmer

When tartan is woven, bands of different colors are placed in varying widths in both the warp and weft. The number of threads of each color required to produce a particular sequence is known as a sett, a term also used to differentiate tartan patterns. While weavers usually think of sett as referring to picks or ends per unit of measurement, in this case, it refers to the picks of each hue in order per repeat. Color is pivotal to tartan design, as each stripe of the warp crosses every stripe of the weft. When vertical and horizontal stripes of different colors cross, the result is a mixture of the two colors in equal proportion, creating a distinct hue.

After tartan cloth was cut from the loom, it was ready for fulling, or waulking. The cloth was soaked in an alkaline solution and then worked with the hands and feet to close the fibers. This was traditionally women’s work, and songs were sung to keep time as the cloth was pummeled. Some of these songs featured lewd lyrics and salacious stories. The history and lore surrounding waulking songs have become an area of study all to itself.

By the sixteenth century, the Highlands were both topographically and culturally different from the rest of Scotland. Many Highlanders maintained the Gaelic language, were governed by a clan system, and adopted a distinctive style of dress. During this time, tartan cloth was valuable enough to be included in recorded deeds and town inventories. Popular fashion also began to showcase the fabric. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Highland men wore their tartans “kilted.” The fabric was bunched around the waist, sometimes draped over the shoulders, and belted, creating an overall folded and oversized appearance. Legend has it that the modern kilt was invented in the 1730s by an iron foundry owner who found the bulky clothes worn by his employees to be unfit for work and thus developed a simpler garment in the Highland style.

The naming of tartan patterns after clans can likely be pinpointed to one historical event—the visit of King George to Scotland in 1822. Highland chiefs were summoned to this highly orchestrated pageant and asked to wear “official” clan tartans throughout the event. Regional weavers likely found it more expedient to mass-produce local patterns that were popular at the time rather than start from scratch. Combine this with the Victorian fad of taxonomic rigor (Victorians loved to classify everything), and the official clan tartan was born.