Tartans of Scotland – 2024 slimline calendar

The rebel cloth

Scotland is known for many things, like whisky, music, the occasional culinary item and so much more. However, when it comes to design nothing says 'Scotland' like a tartan. Even though the cloth was banned for decades following the Jacobite uprising of 1745, it has since gone on to become a symbol of the nation.

Cringe no more

While many see the rich cultural heritage of tartan as twee or parochial, and others bemoan it as a 19th Century invention, designers all over the world have taken inspiration from these woven wonders. The origins of what we now call tartan stretches back thousands of years. Known globally as a Scottish fabric, it is linked locally to the land and people all across the country. It's about time that we celebrated this most colourful of cloths.

About those colours

While the 'sett' or design of each tartan is unique, the colour palette can be varied. The typical tartan is called 'modern', which refers to the richly coloured chemical dyes that revolutionised the production of tartan in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, designers began to draw on a less glaring palette in an attempt to emulate early natural dyes. These tartans are called 'ancient'. A few decades later saw the discovery of buried Jacobite tartans, whose colours had been altered by their time in peat bogs. This gave rise to the colours of 'weathered' tartans. Lastly, there are 'muted' tartans, whose colours are more or less a muted version of modern. 

What's in the calendar?

January: Modern variant of Burns 1930 tartan
February: Ancient variant of Scott Hunting tartan
March: Ancient variant of Lindsay tartan
April: Modern variant of MacKay of Strathnaver tartan
May: Weathered variant of Reid Green tartan
June: Ancient variant of Clark tartan
July: Ancient variant of Murray, Lord Mungo tartan
August: Muted variant of Kerr tartan
September: Ancient variant of Ramsay (Angus & Mearns) tartan
October: Modern variant of Taylor Dress tartan
November: Modern variant of Drummond of Strathallan
December: Muted variant of Wallace tartan

The artwork

Composed primarily of a large section of the tartan, the pattern will repeat depending on the size of the sett. Each line of thread is carefully drawn to replicate the tartan and is shown alongside a block palette of the colours used.

Product details

• 12 pages
• full colour throughout
• measures 420x154mm

• printed in Scotland on FSC® Mixed Sources paper