"Ancient" Colors Revisited

“Ancient” Colors Revisited

In my column last month dealing with tartan terminology (an admittedly confusing subject), I wrote that the term “ancient” tartan “refers to the same tartan produced in lighter tones, meant to reflect what that tartan might look like after years and years of fading…”

I have said much the same thing for years, in various writings both in print and on line. This time, however, my comments drew some criticism. They go against the common view that the “ancient” colors are not meant to represent a faded tartan. Rather, they are supposed to represent the tartan as it would appear dyed with natural dyes.

This can be verified by consulting any number of tartan books. For example, in the ever-popular So You’re Going to Wear the Kilt!, J. Charles Thompson points out that when the weavers began producing lighter colored tartans, “they argued that with the old dyes the darker colors could not have been produced, and they called the lighter color scheme ‘ancient’ colors.” However, one may question the accuracy of their efforts. In the very next sentence, Thompson counters, “Actually, indigo, which was available from a very early date, gives as dark a blue as anyone could wish.”

Indeed, anyone familiar with natural dying understands that the so-called “ancient” colors do not accurately reflect the range of colors available with traditional dying techniques. Traditional Scottish dyers could certainly achieve a variety of shades of red other than the orange seen in the “ancient” tartans, for example. But the criticism that I received is that the intent of the weavers who gave us the term “ancient” was to represent natural dyed cloth, not aged cloth. Regardless of how inaccurate it may be, such was the intent, and this is the definition of the term we are unfortunately stuck with.

This has led to a lot of confusion over the years, and dissatisfaction by those who have a serious interest in Highland dress. For example, in the same chapter of his book as quoted from above, Thompson explains, “In all the above I have put ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ in quotes, because I do not like either term. It is much better to simply talk of the ‘dark’ and ‘light’ color schemes.”

However, “ancient” and “modern” are deeply imbedded in today’s tartan lexicon, and they seem to be with us to stay. Still it would be nice to find a first-hand account of how the term actually came about. We know, for example, that the “reproduction” color scheme was originated by the D. C. Dalgliesh tartan mill in Selkirk, and was inspired by tartans that had been found buried for centuries and had taken on an earthy hue. The “reproduction” name is trademarked, so other mills use the term “weathered” to describe this color range.

The origin of the “ancient” color scheme does not appear to be as well documented. The most oft heard tale is that it was an early twentieth century effort meant simply to reflect the colors obtainable with natural dyes, as a contrast to the darker aniline dyes introduced in 1856. D. C. Stewart writes in The Setts of the Scottish Tartans (c. 1950), “The vegetable dyes formerly used had a softness by nature…” But a few pages on he writes, “Another peculiarity of some of these dyes is that though they may change with age and exposure, the change consists in a lightening of the tone without the color itself fading” (emphasis mine).

It is this lighter tone seen in some aged tartans that I suggest the “ancient” color scheme is supposed to emulate. It seems more plausible than the notion that vegetable dyes were only capable of achieving light colors.

Bob Martin relates in his All About Your Kilt that the inspiration for the “ancient” colors was a gentleman who came to an event wearing an old kilt, the inside of which showed the typical dark colors, but the outside had faded to lighter shades. Tartan scholar Peter MacDonald relates much the same story on his web site (www.scottishtartans.co.uk/colour.htm). The same is repeated on the web site of the Scottish Tartans Authority. None of these sources site particular details. Who was this gentleman? What tartan was the kilt in? How old was it? When did this occur? And what was the first woolen mill to give us the “ancient” colors?

I would love to hear from anyone who might have access to the records of tartan producers in the early twentieth century, to see if we cannot better document the origin of the “ancient” color scheme – now a staple in the tartan industry. If the above anecdotal evidence is true, it lends credence to my view that the “ancient” colors are meant to represent the look of a tartan which has faded with age.

MacDonald writes on his web site that he “has demonstrated this [fading] process by placing a piece of cloth in modern colours under glass in direct sunlight with half the sample covered. Over a period of about 18 months the section in the light faded out towards the ancient range.” Bob Martin relates in his book a similar experiment he performed by artificially fading various tartan samples which led him to conclude that the “ancient” color scheme best reflects a faded tartan.

So what did old, vegetable dyed tartans look like when they were new? According to James Scarlett in Tartan: The Highland Textile. “[T]he Highland dyers appear to have experienced no difficulty in obtaining a fairly bright red, a good yellow, a clear, dark blue and a definite green from the sources available to them. Green was usually rather lighter than blue…” Indeed, the greens typically seen were closer to a loden green than the bottle green seen in most tartans today. However, if one is looking for a generally available tartan that most closely resembles traditional dyes, the “modern” colors are a far better match than the “ancient.”

In the end, no serious textile historian believes that natural dyes in Scotland were only capable of giving us the light shades of the so-called “ancient” tartans. The debate here really is about the intent of those weavers who first brought us the “ancient” color scheme. Is it meant to represent the colors of old vegetable dyes? Or is it meant to reflect the colors of those dyes after some fading due to age and exposure? The received wisdom says the former, and so we must give it recognition. However, I find the latter to be entirely more probable.