Reading Cloth

One of my close friends recently visited Scotland and she brought a woollen scarf from there, completely hand-woven with a pattern consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in a couple of colours. The look of it suddenly reminded me of the pattern on bagpipers’ costume. I went further down to research about this piece of cloth and realised that I was absolutely right!

I then started reading about the traditional dress of Scotland and I came across the term ‘Highland dress’, which was characterised by ‘tartan’ pattern. Although the tartan pattern had been used since 3000BC in many parts of the world, tartan, in general, however came to be extremely popular in Scottish Highland culture in the 16th century. The ‘Dress Act of 1746’ attempted to bring the warrior clans under government control by banning the tartan (in order to suppress the rebellious Scottish culture) and other aspects of Gaelic culture. When the law was repealed in 1782, it was no longer ordinary Highland dress, but was adopted instead as the symbolic national dress of Scotland. Different Scottish clans have different tartan patterns on their costumes. The variations are in colour and slightly in the pattern. This difference gives the clans recognition.

Tartan originated in woven wool but now they appear in many different materials. The construction of tartan pattern involves the warp (vertical yarn) and the weft (horizontal yarn) to intersect at right angles, where each thread of warp crosses each same coloured weft to form a solid colour block. This block of solid colour is broken by another solid colour thin strip of woven warps and wefts forming a pivot in the centre.

There are three variations in the tartan: modern, ancient and muted. The modern tartan has more variety of colour and the colours are usually darker, which tells the use of chemical dyes as opposed to the ancient lighter coloured tartans, which were made using natural dyes. The colours that one usually finds in a tartan pattern are red (One such myth is that red tartans were "battle tartans", designed so they would not show blood), green (symbolises prairies or forests), blue (symbolises lakes and rivers) and yellow (used to symbolise various crops). In the present day the use of colour black is also seen in the tartan patterns.

After knowing the history of tartan cloth I used this knowledge to read and analyse the tartan scarf, which I spoke about earlier. I first checked the material and got to know that it was acrylic wool and not pure wool. The finish of the fabric was very ‘felt-like’ (compressed wool). Then I went further to study the pattern and the colours. The colours used are darker shades of red, green and blue. Comparing this to my above research I understood that the yarns are chemically dyed. The complete piece is woven using the weave called “twill weave” (diagonal). The scarf is hand woven, which one can tell by looking at the tasseled warp ends.

At present I feel the tartan pattern is more of a style statement because people use it without knowing its significance, its cultural value and the stories that are connected with it.

Reference:

http://www.scottishamericansociety.org/id21.html
http://www.kinlochanderson.com/highland-dress/history-of-tartan/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartan
http://www.scottishtartans.org/tartan.html
http://www.igotyourrug.com/oriental-rug-blog/the-difference-between-hand-made-rugs-and-machine-made-rugs/