Woven heritage

If you have Scottish ancestry, the chances are that you have your own clan tartan. The distinctive pattern of any given tartan, made by criss-crossing different coloured threads, is called a “sett”. These setts are often associated with clans and families, such as the popular Royal Stewart fabric. Others were bespoke setts, such as the Balmoral tartan designed by Prince Albert in 1853 and named after the royal family’s Deeside castle.

Woven in Scotland since at least the 4th century AD, tartan became the main cloth worn by both Highlanders and Lowlanders. For many years, the setts they wore had no symbolic meaning and it is only more recently that links between specific tartans and clans has been established. Nevertheless, because the threads were coloured