Tartan of the Month - May. What do you see?

[figheadair]

[QUOTE=Morris at Heathfield;977391]

Other things I noticed: There is a pivot stripe on the selvage, which seems at least a little unusual to me. Also, I was counting the threads in the pivot stripes to see if there was any difference in the warp and weft thread counts. I have to say it's inconclusive, as two of the four pivot stripes are on edges of the cloth. However, I did notice that the red stripe in the weft is seven threads wide—an odd number. Finally, the area where the wide black checks (not sure if that's the right terminology, but they exist on all tartans derived from the Government tartan) cross is noticeably longer in the weft than in the warp. I suspect this observation holds for the entire sett as well.

The elongated effect was often found in old pieces and seems to be a fact of squaring to eye. More often than not the weft is less dense that he warp in pld pieces. One of the side effects, or perhaps it was by design, is that a slightly warp faced cloth is coarser (harder) than a balanced weave.

It looks like the Farquharson Modern tartan as well with the black outlining the red... Though I note that the black does not outline the red along the selvedge.

It does, although the Farquarson of course has red on both blue squares. We don't know what was on the next blue square. The red along the selvedge is probably a form of sevedge mark and not a reflection of the overall sett.

[figheadair]

I'll write this piece up fully for the end of the month but suffice to say at this point that this is the oldest surviving piece of military tartan and as far as I know, the only extant piece of regimental tartan pre-c1790.

[figheadair]

Here's my article on the piece in which I come to a different conclusion about the setting of the original - http://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/64t...ers_Tartan.pdf

Thoughts, comments?

[MacBean]

Back to Lord Loudoun, are we? I did have a few letters back and forth with Ruari, for which I thank you. I wonder if the MacKintosh was under compulsion to raise troops for Loudon.

That's a lovely old piece of tartan; a real treasure. Thanks for letting us see it.