All in the (Robertson) Family (the tartan, not the TV comedy)

[OC Richard]

Peter would have the full answers.

The Setts of the Scottish Tartans (sorry Peter) says the one with the white line, and all the narrow flanking lines blue, appears in "early collections".

Logan (1831) gives the version with the white line changed to red, and the narrow flanking lines alternating green and blue. (Your upper swatch keeps them all blue.)

Now leaving Setts, the Wilsons 1819 Key Pattern Book gives a version with no white. It has three colours: Scarlet, Green, and the colour Wilsons called 'Purple' ("a dark Navy with slight reddish tint"). Wilsons' note says "This is the real Clan Donnachy or Robertson of Strouans tartan."

Here's a quick computer-generated image of the Wilsons' Robertson thread count. I used the pale green sometimes seen with Wilsons tartans.



About sett size, that's independent of the sett. The weaver takes the thread count and does the maths to scale it up or down to create the sett-size they want.

You can purchase the Wilsons 1819 Key Pattern Book and get all the old Wilsons thread-counts, and The Setts Of The Scottish Tartans to get the thread-counts of the most commonly-seen Clan tartans.

Armed with these and with a free online tartan generator you can create images of most of the older Clan tartans.