Tartan: The misunderstood icon of 'Scottishness'

More resonances cling to tartan than perhaps any other fabric. It's a stirring visual expression of both history and geography, as well as innovative design and self-expression. "There are many ways in which you can make a tartan distinctive and imbue it with personal or collective meaning," says Rosie Waine, William Grant Foundation research fellow at National Museums Scotland. "Throughout its history, tartan has been used to express political viewpoints, as well as familial, regional and national identities. It has been viewed as tame and conservative by some; bold, brilliant and radical by others."

Far from being a dyed-in-the-wool slice of historic Caledonian kitsch, tartan design is very much alive and well in the 21st Century – as evidenced by the stream of new examples recorded each year at the Scottish Register of Tartans. And the range of inspirations is as diverse as the designs.

Take the 2021 design entitled COP26 – A New Dawn, a dazzling creation providing a textile take on the hugely important global climate change summit due to be staged in Glasgow this November. Designed by Brian Wilton – former director of the Scottish Tartans Authority, and a leading light in contemporary tartan design – it is typical of the new wave of tartans drawing inspiration from social and historical issues.

"I always try to base some of the geometry of a new tartan on an historical tartan so that, somehow, it's rooted in the past, and has a little bit of history clinging to it. It isn't just a johnny-come-lately produced for fulfilling a transient need," says Wilton.

In the case of COP26 – A New Dawn, inspiration came from design research where Wilton found a synchronicity between the Scottish town of Callander and the name of the pioneering scientist with almost the same name (Guy Stewart Callendar) who, in 1938, first linked the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.

With Callander being in a region associated with the MacGregor clan, Wilton used the colours of their tartan (blue, green and white) as a springboard for a design that added new layers of resonance – both visual and conceptual. For example, when woven, colours come together at certain points to fill the fabric with glowing points of brightness that look like miniature suns rising on a new dawn. "So the focal point is the rising Sun surrounded by the colours of the Scottish flag (blue and white)," says Wilton.

The green squares in the design, meanwhile, each use 26 threads in the weaving process, nodding to the conference name. Finally, the new tartan includes reused wool from the textile recycling centre of Prato in Tuscany, one of Scotland's partners for the COP26 conference.

Painting with fabric

Wilton's effect of tiny suns is an example of the visual creativity that can be injected into the basic tartan template of squares and perpendicular lines that arose from its loom-based weaving process.

Tartan design can sometimes echo processes more familiar in the language of abstract painters – think Piet Mondrian's famous intermeshed geometric squares, or the Op Art interplay of colours and movement where lines intersect. "A tartan can contain any colours plucked from the spectrum and arranged in an infinite variety of bands, lines and blocks," says Wilton simply.

"The core of tartan design – the interweaving of colours in both warp and weft – has remained largely the same throughout history," adds Rosie Waine. "However, the range of colours, fibres and finishes available has become far more varied with the progress of time and technological innovation."

In Medieval times, for example, the colours of tartan fabric would have been significantly limited to the choice of native plants in each region of Scotland from which natural dyes could be extracted. By the 18th Century, however, global trade meant tartan makers could access more exotic colour sources. "Bright scarlets and blues, for example, were most often achieved by using natural dyestuffs imported from abroad, such as cochineal and indigo," explains Waine.

A socially conscious fabric

Brian Wilton's tartan for the upcoming COP26 climate conference is just one example of a classic fabric going beyond simple aesthetics to explore more serious issues. One example is a 2018 tartan linked to Scotland's homelessness crisis, designed by Brian Halley at Glasgow-based tartan pioneers Slanj Kilts. "For this design I wanted as much colour as possible to weave into the wool – the most colours you can put on a loom," explains Halley. "The grey backdrop symbolises the miserable gloom homeless people can find themselves in, and the colours represent the support and opportunities available if they can get on to the system. Each of the colours are woven the same thickness to form a network, which to my knowledge makes it unique." As well as raising awareness of homelessness, 20% of the money raised from sales of the Homeless tartan goes to the charity Shelter Scotland.

Other striking tartans designed by Halley have very different inspirations. In contrast to Brian Wilton's more optimistic climate-change tartan, for example, Halley's 2020 Climate Emergency tartan draws its colours "from the Earth on fire – green, blue and white for the Earth, and orange red and yellow for the flames".

Far-flung references

Other contemporary tartans illustrate the ability of this classic Scottish fabric to reach far and wide in their reference to place and time. For example, an Obama Family tartan commissioned from Brian Halley to mark the former US President's 2017 visit to Scotland took design cues from colours associated with key places in his life as different as Chicago, Hawaii and Kenya.

Black is for line upon line of enemy bombers, while silver is the most chilling sight of all – the bubbles in the wake of an oncoming torpedo – Brian Wilton

Brian Wilton drew on military inspiration for a powerful 2016 tartan commissioned by the Russian Consul General in Edinburgh to honour those who sailed the Russian Arctic convoys of World War Two. "With echoes of the MacLeod and MacKenzie tartans from the clan lands bordering Loch Ewe – departure point for so many of the World War Two arctic convoys to Archangel and Murmansk – the Russian Arctic Convoy tartan encapsulates the essential colours remembered by convoy veterans," explains Wilton. "Colours of dread, death and destruction, but colours too of bravery, hope and survival. White brings a multitude of memories – ice floes, wind-whipped wave-tops, snow and ice-encrusted superstructures – and today, the classic white berets of the surviving veterans.

"Grey is for the sea and the sky, for the Allied battleships and the ever-threatening enemy U-boats. Black is for line upon line of enemy bombers, while silver is the most chilling sight of all – the bubbles in the wake of an oncoming torpedo. Brightening the hopes of many thousands of those Arctic mariners however – and the desperate, besieged Russian civilians – was the Red Ensign of the escorting Royal Naval vessels, and red too in the merchantmen's own flag – the Red Duster – and that of the Russian flag."

Keeping it local

21st-Century tartans can also look at the fabric of Scotland in fresh ways. When, in 2014, the northern Scottish region of Aberdeenshire hired Donna Wilson to create a tartan that expressed the distinctiveness of the region, she chose to do her initial research in local primary schools.

"I decided to work with primary school children about what symbolised their Aberdeenshire most," says Wilson, who made a video of her encounters. "I really wanted to see through their eyes, and the results were so much fun. A sweetshop in Stonehaven, lots of weather and sea colours, even the colour of fish and chips were put forward for inclusion. It was a new way of working for me, and very rewarding to see how passionate the kids were about being involved, and having their input into this cloth."

The new tartan was woven with seven distinctive colours. The first is called Old Meldrum, a burnished gold alluding to whisky stills at the Glen Garioch distillery near Aberdeen. Next is Stonehaven, a dark pink referencing sweets at Aunt Betty's sweetshop in that town. Aboyne is the green of a frosty lichen found in local woodland, while Fraserburgh is a lilac-blue symbolising the sea and sky around that seaside town. Kintore is another green, reminiscent of woodland around that area, while Harvest is a barley colour that reminded Wilson of autumn on the farm where she grew up. Peterhead, meanwhile, is a minty green from the sea spray of a famous local fishing town.

A fabric of invention

Contemporary tartan weaves between the past, present and future, drawing on artistic invention that Rosie Waine sees as a beautiful balancing act. "As a tartan historian, I can see how centuries of tartan lore could have hindered creativity for designers in the present," she says. "Tartan design became heavily regimented in the 19th Century, when a strict system of clan tartans first dominated the market. However, while the legacy of clan tartans remains strong, as a living tradition tartan is always evolving to meet the needs of weavers and wearers."

Let's give the last word to a young Scottish child at one of the schools visited by Donna Wilson, who described tartan as "a bunch of colours, and you shove them all together in a bunch of squares and lines". That's true, of course – but it's so much more than that.