Different color variations of the same tartan

Many tartans come in Modern, Ancient, Muted or Weathered versions. Some clans even have a Dress tartan or a Hunting tartan. In this video, we break down the differences in each of the color palettes.

Transcription of video:

A tartan is defined by it's thread count. By thread count I mean the colors, the sequence that the colors are in, and the number of threads in each color. In this instance this tartan has 20 red, a few navy blue, 20 more red, 12 bottle green, 6 yellow, etc. When you take those colors across the warp and weft of the cloth, you get a tartan! This is a modern color tartan, the reds in this will be bold, the green will be a very bottle green, and the blue will be a navy blue. The modern color tartans use stark colors to mimic modern dyes.

This is an ancient tartan. The ancient colors are supposed to imitate plant dyes. The red turns to more orange, green turns to grassy green, and blue turns to light blue.

In weathered colors, the red turns to a more salmon red, the blue turns to a grey color, and the green turns to a brown. Weathered or also called reproduction tartans, are meant to look like they were pulled out of a peat bog.

Muted color tartans are very similar to weathered tartans. The red will be a blood red, the green will be an olive green, and the blue will be like a stormy sky blue.

Dress tartans and hunting tartans are completely different and have nothing to do with the color palates. For instance, this is MacDonald of Clanranald Dress. This is a dress tartan because there is a lot of white in it. Typically when you talk about a dress tartan, it will have a lot of white in it, not every time, but often. Dress tartans can be made in different color palates. For instance, this is the dress MacDonald tartan in the olive muted color palates.

A hunting tartan is similar to a dress tartan in the fact that it is different from the clan’s normal tartan. This is the Robertson Red tartan, this is the original tartan. The Robertson hunting tartan was developed separately and was given the name hunting to separate it from the original Robertson red.