Old & Rare Scottish Tartans - was D.W. Stewart Colour Blind?

**figheadair** · 10th November 10, 07:38 AM

Matt's done a great job getting Stewart's Old & Rare on-line along with several other important early works. They provide an invaluable research resource but their contents are often suspect and they should always been view in the context of when they were produced.
For years Stewart's work has been hailed as a sort of Holy Grail with, by his own claim, the silk plates being carefully matched in both sett and colour to the originals. Over some 25 years of research I've been fortunate to examine a number of the original artefacts that he claimed to have reproduced accurately and I’m forced to the conclusion that he was either colour blind or full of his own self importance. There can be no other reason for such huge discrepancies between the original pieces and his 'accurate' copies.

I've written elsewhere about finding the original Culloden Coat and just how different the original and Stewart's rendering of the tartan are. The same can be said for his; Plaid found at Culloden, MacDonald of Kingsburgh and a number of the other older tartans he includes.

Does all this matter? Well yes is does, especially where he gives completely different colours or settings and claims them to be correct. At best this was sloppy research but in doing so he created a truism that has been perpetuated, not least by his son in The Setts, and which continues to be passed off on the unsuspecting.

**NorCalPiper** · 10th November 10, 09:45 AM

So is it officially understood that all tartans are just made up fancies? I'm inclined to think that Sir Walter Scott add-on the Sobieski Bros. contributed to something that was more romantic wishful thinking than reality. Not that it really matters today, right?

**piperdbh** · 10th November 10, 10:14 AM

Is this why there are so many different patterns and colorways that have the same "clan" name?

**figheadair** · 10th November 10, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by piperdbh

Is this why there are so many different patterns and colorways that have the same "clan" name?

It's probably the main reason. In the C19th there were at least seven major books published on clans and tartans and often each one gave a different variation, or so it appeared. Often it was the limitations of printing that resulted in poor quality representations that were later taken as different patterns for a given name. Grant, Skene and MacAlasdair are but three example that come readily to minds.

**Bugbear** · 10th November 10, 12:05 PM

Maybe he didn't like the way they looked and "sanitized" the recordings of the colors. That seems to be a popular thing to have done in accounts of events...

**figheadair** · 10th November 10, 01:04 PM

I don't have a problem with that unless one then states that the aim is to present the real facts which have been missed or misinterpreted by previous authors. Stewart presented his work as historically accurate. Hence my thread title.

**Bugbear** · 10th November 10, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by figheadair

I don't have a problem with that unless one then states that the aim is to present the real facts which have been missed or misinterpreted by previous authors. Stewart presented his work as historically accurate. Hence my thread title.

I stepped in a history discussion again!

It sounds like he made it up, but I'm going by the information in this thread. I only know that there is a history of history being presented as historically accurate, later being found to have been partly made up or produced by unintentional blindness. Same goes for some of the archeology over here in the States. I'm not a historian, and I do not intend this to be a criticism of historians or the process of interpreting history.

**figheadair** · 13th November 10, 02:18 AM

Originally Posted by Bugbear

It sounds like he made it up, but I'm going by the information in this thread. I only know that there is a history of history being presented as historically accurate, later being found to have been partly made up or produced by unintentional blindness. Same goes for some of the archeology over here in the States. I'm not a historian, and I do not intend this to be a criticism of historians or the process of interpreting history.

I don't think he necessarly made things up but I do think that he was a sloppy historian/tartan expert. To demonstrate this I hope to get an article on-line today about the MacDonald of Kingsburgh that he was the first to show.