Tartans Of Scotland

Travel Scotland have teamed up with the Scottish Tartans World Register to bring you the complete Register of all Publicly Known Tartans online, which includes details and images of over 2800 Scottish tartans - some well known tartans and some very obscure.

Although a number of countries have tartans and plaids, tartans are strongly associated with Scotland and the Scottish family or clan system. In fact it was the Victorians who really popularised tartans with their romantic interest in Scottish history and the Jacobite era. The resulting interest led to a resurgence in tartan design and the reworking of tartans into new schemes. The plethora of tartans that exist now are mainly victorian in their origin. Most clans have more than one tartan: a dress or formal tartan and a hunting tartan that is normally less showy. Contemporary tartan weavers have started to eschew the bright synthetic colours to attempt to render more natural colours that owe more to traditional skills and materials. The results are usually more interesting and more restrained. Weaving has long been a scottish industry owing to the availability of fast flowing water to drive mill machinery. Whilst industrial weaving on a large scale is dying out, Scotland remains home to a fertile community of weavers to take as their inspiration local colours and materials to make world famous cashmeres and tweeds. Tartans and tweeds share many characteristics and there is nothing more glamorous than a well dressed man in beautiful tweed jacket and tartan trews. Many stalkers on the hill swear that a suit of heavy tweed is warmer and dryer than any man-made fabric, a truth to which I can attest from sitting in Sutherland in the rain and the wind in heavy plus-twos warm and comfortable.

You'll also find a wealth of information here on Scotland's national cloth and associated gifts and clothing available from our Tartan Shop, no matter what your tartan.

Tartan Q & A | Scottish Associations | World Register | Scottish Heritage