Advertisement

Inside the whimsical world of tartans

The first official tartan of Colchester County, N.S., has joined an exclusive international club.

The tartan, designed to commemorate the first Colchester Highland Games and Gathering, taking place this fall, was accepted last month by the Scottish Register of Tartans. With its official Scot-sanctioned status, the new tartan joins a wonderful and sometimes downright wacky world of warp and weft enthusiasts.

Linda Finnie, who hails from Kilmarnock, the Scottish birthplace of Johnnie Walker whisky, said when she and others set about organizing the highland games last summer, "we realized that Colchester had no county tartan."

So, they set out to correct that.

Colours reflect people and land

First, the group had to decide on colours.

"Colchester County is known for the Bay of Fundy and our red loam soil, so red is the predominant colour because it's the colour of the land we live in," Finnie said.

"We decided that we would look at all the cultures that actually make up Colchester and Nova Scotia. Obviously, the first one that came to mind was the Mi'kmaq. They are the original people from here."

Black was selected to represent part of the Mi'kmaq medicine wheel, yellow represents daffodils and the yellow in the Acadian flag, blue is for rivers and Scottish heritage, and green represents trees.

Designed in Cape Breton

The group enlisted the help of Deana Lloy of Sydney-based Red Label Kilts to design the tartan. Lloy said designing a tartan is "quite a complicated process" and is "not just about putting colour on fabric."

Every thread is planned and counted and analyzed to make sure it works with the design as a whole, she said.

"Once someone looks at it and says the word love, then you know, 'OK, this is the one. This is it,'" Lloy said.

After the design was settled, Lloy sent it off to Scotland, where a committee of the Scottish Register of Tartans reviewed the application, ensured the name was appropriate, and, most importantly, confirmed there is no other tartan that looks the same.

The Colchester tartan was approved on May 3 and will be unveiled in Truro on Sept. 8, the day before the games.

Finnie said the computer-generated image of the Colchester tartan on the register's website doesn't do the real tartan justice.

"The real tartan is much prettier," she said.

First kilt $2,500

The first batch of fabric, which is being woven in Scotland, will be used to make kilts, available at a premium of $2,500 for the first one and $1,500 for the second to fifth kilts. Lloy said the kilts take 16 to 20 hours to make, and they are sewed entirely by hand.

"It is very pretty, I must say," Finnie said of the tartan. "I am definitely going to be buying one of those first kilts."

Future production of the tartan must be approved by the Colchester Highland Games & Gathering Society.

"No one can just go producing it willy-nilly for a really cheap price. We have already been inundated with requests from Far Eastern countries who want to produce it."

Provincial, national tartans

Nova Scotia's most well-known tartan is likely the Nova Scotia tartan — or, depending on your provenance, perhaps the Cape Breton tartan.

But there are many other tartans connected with the province. There's one for Inverness County, the Annapolis Valley, Pictou County and New Glasgow, one for the ship Hector, the Cape Breton Polish Society, Big Spruce Brewing and the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service (the colours of that one represent death, blood and post-mortem changes). There's even one specifically for the WestJet flight service between Halifax and Glasgow.

Across Canada, some perhaps surprising official tartans have been registered, including one for the Canadian Dental Association, the Children's Wish Foundation of Canada and the Correctional Service of Canada.

Wacky world of tartans

And beyond the country's borders, well, it just gets downright bizarre.

Hello Kitty tartan? Check.

Peter Rabbit tartan? Check.

Tartans honouring Madonna, the movie Alien and Arbroath smokie (a specific type of smoked haddock)? Check, check and check.

Shakespeare lovers may be interested in the very dark Witches' Blood tartan, inspired by Macbeth, which "abounds in images of blood and the darkness of night."

For a slightly more esoteric crowd, there's a tartan that's an "interpretation of the dog collar tartan from the Doctor WhoK-9 robot, 'the loyal friend to Tom Baker's Doctor between 1977 to 1981,'" according to the register.

Rocky Horror Picture Show fans may want to consider the Brad Majors tartan, which is an attempted re-creation of the tartan used for the character's bow tie in the film.

And here's one for all of us, no matter where we're from: world peace.