Rare Tartan Books available online

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Hello, all!

I wanted to let you know of a new project that the Scottish Tartans Museum is working on. It's an offshoot of our web site dedicated to primary source material for tartan studies. Introducing....
http://resources.scottishtartans.org

We are in the process of photographing and uploading tartan illustrations (and eventually other Highland dress illustrations) from some of the nineteenth century source material in our museum collection. We have decided to begin with the iconic and infamous Vestiarium Scoticum from 1842.

The authors of this work, John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, claimed to have taken their tartan information from sixteenth century manuscripts, which were reproduced in the volume. This was later proven to be a hoax, but nevertheless many of the tartans included in the Vestiarium would become widely accepted and many are indeed still in current use today. It represents the first time tartans were associated with many lowland families. It also represents the first time tartans were illustrated in print using the method devloped by William and Andrew Smith of Mauchline, Scotland, wherein individual lines of color are laid down, almost like "weaving" the tartan on the page. This more accurately represented the half-tone effect seen in woven tartan cloth, where two colors intersect one another.

All of the color tartan illustrations from the Vestiarium are now available to be viewed online, free of charge.

A little background information: The Scottish Tartans Museum has recently been able to acquire an extensive collection of old and rare tartan books, including not only the Vestiarium Scoticum from 1842, but also works such as The Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland (Smith, 1850), The Clans of the Scottish Highlands (Smibert, 1850), Tartans of the Clans of Scotland (Grant, 1886), and Old & Rare Scottish Tartans (Stewart, 1893). Also part of this collection were many books of interest to Highland dress historians that are not directly related to tartan, including The Costumes of the Clans, by John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart (1892 reprint), The Book of the Club of the True Highlanders (1881), Ancient Scottish Weapons (Drummond, 1881), and others. All in all, there are 13 books of this nature in the collection. Our intent is to make the pertiant Highland dress illustrations (with a major focus on tartan) from these rare resources as available to the public as possible via this web site project.

I'd like to say that this valuable collection has been donated to the museum, but that is not the reality. We have argeed to purchase this collection for the sum of $7000. We feel that this is quite a fair price, especially seeing as a collection of tartan reference material this complete simply does not get offered for sale every day. We feel that it is very important that this collection find a home in the Scottish Tartans Museum.

The cold, hard reality is that we have been operating on a very tight budget these past two years, ever since the economy took a nose dive. Until it recovers signifigantly, our spending needs to remain tightly reigned in. However, we could not let this opportunity pass. We are committed to obtaining this collection, and the sellers have graciously agreed to allow us to make payments in installments over the course of the next year. Our goal is to pay for the collection through donations. We have already raised $2400 towards the $7000 we need, leaving a balance of $4600.

I was able, this past weekend at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, to present the sellers with their first payment of $2400, allowing me to take possession of these valuable resources. Since that time, I have been working hard putting together the web site at http://resources.scottishtartans.org, so that I could illustrate what our vision is of a free tartan information resource on line that would be able to bring this primary source material to the public.

I will end this missive by inviting you to enjoy the resources we have already made available to you, and help spread the word among friends and family who have a love for Scottish heritage and the iconic tartan tradition. Please check back on the site regularly as we are able to make available more resources to the public.

Aye,
Matt Newsome