Blue and Green Tartans that *aren't* derived from the Government Sett?

[usonian]

Thanks, everyone! I'm endlessly fascinated by the interplay of color and line weight of tartan setts - so many variations and sometimes a small change makes a huge difference.

They're lacking the green I mentioned in the OP, but honorable mention for a couple of blue-heavy tartans: Clergy and Ramsay Blue Hunting

[M. A. C. Newsome]

There is the Matheson Hunting tartan.


Kerr Hunting tartan.


Others I can think of would be the various Graham tartans and the MacCallum tartan.

[figheadair]

So was there any differentiation between the 2? Did one have 4 thread gaurds and the other 2 or was it an identical tartan with 2 names?

Wilsons' 1819 Kep Pattern Book contains two versions of Forbes; one with the K guard and one without. There are five sett sizes given for the latter. Interesting the 1819 doesn't include Lamont although we know from samples in the Cockburn Collection that the non-K sett was also being used by Lamonts at that time too. That is very much at the begging of the clan tartan rush and so it's not surprising to find some variation and duplication.

[HenryT]

Concerning the Lamont tartan, there is a paper delivered by Lieutenant-Colonel William Lamont, V.D. C.A. Glasgow
delivered to the Clan Lamont Society, at their Annual General Meeting on 6th May, 1910 which can be found at:

http://www.lamont-young.com/lamont/s...iaID=123&all=1

In this paper one can find this excerpt mentioning Forbes and Lamont tartans :

"One thing that the Lamont Clan can congratulate themselves upon is that there never been any doubt which pattern is the Lamont tartan. There is no single case of a different tartan being attributed to the Lamonts – any variations appearing in different books being merely slight errors or immaterial differences which are easily accounted for. A good many of the clans have quarreled with the authenticity of the “Vestiarium Scoticum” because so many tartans do not appear as they expected, but we Lamonts quarrel with no authority as to our tartan, because they all agree. The green tartans, or as some people call them, the blue tartans, have a foundation of green and blue with black borders and sprangs. Of this class are the Lamont, the Campbell, the Farquharson, the Gordon, and the Sutherland, which are generally depicted as in all respects the same, except for the distinguishing stripes of white, yellow, or red. The Lamonts are the sole possessors of the white stripe through the green. This is frankly acknowledged by Lord Archibald Campbell in a letter in “The Glasgow Herald,” which I remember reading perhaps 20 or 25 years ago, with reference to the spurious pattern which appeared in the Mauchline Tartan Book in 1850 under the name of “Argyle Campbell.”

Any question of confusion arising with the Graham, which has, according to some authorities, two narrow white stripes through the green and a different arrangement of black setts, is very unlikely. The one tartan which I notice a good number of people are apt to be confused about is that worn by the Scottish Rifles and the boys of the Glasgow High School. The difference principally in this that the white stripe is through the blue, the Lamont stripe being through the green, but this tartan is apparently one of those that Stewart in his “Old and Rare Tartans” alludes to as “merely modern inventions for clothing Regimental Highlanders.” The Forbes tartan, as in the “Vestiarium Scoticum” and the painted pattern book, is a tartan having no blue, but green and black with a red stripe through the green and a yellow stripe through the black – a fine bold tartan, distinct from all the others; and how the Forbes clan came to use the Lamont tartan in preference to this is still a mystery as much to themselves as to us. I discussed the apparent difference between the Lamont tartan and that now worn by the Forbeses, with Major Forbes, who was the secretary of the Highland Loan section of the last Edinburgh Exhibition, and we came to the conclusion on examining old patterns that they are the one and same tartan. The supposed distinction, which is not a real difference, is one which has been made in the past at haphazard, consisting black fieldings on the white to throw out the bright stripe and give strength to the distinction of colours. I think it looks as if there was no intended difference between a tartan having the black fieldings and one not having them; it is quite common, for instance, to see the Campbell tartan with black fieldings on the white and yellow lines, sometimes with, and sometimes without, and it does not appear that any valid distinction is intended."