Tartans have become synonymous with Scotland and Scottish clans and families in particular. However, tartans were originally a style of cloth intended to be decorative.

They had patterns that were popular within certain districts of manufacture, they relied on a limited range of colour dyes and were made of the local coarser type of wool.

This has lead to the idea of district tartans being the original association, between the land, the community and its cloth. Where there was a strong clan within a district, as was often the case in the highlands, then visitors from other areas might well have been recognised as of a clan from their tartan. This must have been true of visitors from the Western Isles, for instance. It is this concept of clan tartans that today predominates, but the use of tartan is yet richer.

Farquharson Clan Tartan
The Setts No: 54 D.C.Stewart notes that the Vestiarium shows both yellow and red against green unlike the usual sett. The source of tartan 1957 was: Vestiarium Scoticum

Farquharson Clan Tartan
First published in James Logan's 'Scottish Gael' in 1831. Four small pieces of this tartan were exhibited by Miss Farquharson of Invercauld at the Highland Exhibition held in Inverness in 1930. They were dated 1774. A specimen in the Highland Society of London Collection bears the seal of Farquharson of Finzean. Farquharsons were prominent Jacobites who fought in both the 1715 and 1745 uprisings. There present day chief is Captain Alwynne Farquharson of Invercauld. The source of tartan 1352 was: Wilson's of Bannockburn 1819

Farquharson Ancient or MacEwan Clan Tartan
MacEwan in MacGregor-Hastie Collection
The source of tartan 1967 was: STS collection (Coulson Bonner)

A tartan pattern emerges out of a single list of coloured threads called a thread count. Reading a tartan requires a little practice and involves finding two unique points within the pattern called the pivots. Tartans consist of broader bands of colour called the under check which are often decorated or embellished with narrower lines of colour called the over check. Once the basic possibilities are understood, one can better appreciate designs that combine and extend the simple ideas.