Links about Tartans

This page was written to accompany Nick Wedd's tartan-generating program.

A tartan is defined by its "sett" or "thread count" – a specification of the set of threads from which it is woven. Several web sites provide lists of tartan definitions, in a variety of formats. Some of these sites are listed below.

A possible use for an image of a tartan is as wallpaper, for the backgound of a web page such as this one. Here is a quick guide on how to use the progam to create such an image.

My tartan-drawing program can be run with any of several sets of tartan definitions. The first three listed contain much common material, and are probably derived from the same sources.

	Source of information	No. of tartans
Run program	Robert Bradford	274
Run program	T. Insel's Tartan for Java	273
Run program	by Jim McBeath & Joseph Shelby	277
Run program	the Scottish Tartans Society	2587
Run program	Miscellaneous	7

All of these versions also offer you the option of defining your own tartan. There are instructions for the use of the program.

Inclusion of a tartan in one of these sets of definitions does not guarantee its authenticity.

The following pages have useful information about tartans, or tartan-generating programs:

Databases of Tartans

The Scottish Register of Tartans. The national repository of tartans, recognised by the government, with over 6,000 tartans.
The House of Tartan's Tartan Finder, with a database of several thousand tartans.
The Scottish Tartans Authority, with a database of hundreds of tartans. This claims to be a registered charity, and to receive government funding; but it is run commercially, and does not allow free access to its database.
Thomas Insel's database.

Tartan-drawing Programs

Thomas Insel's Java and C code for drawing tartans.

General information about Tartans

Extracts from the book Identifying Tartans by Blair Urquhart.
Tartan Information Page by Mitchell Kilt Hire. Information about tartans

Dead Links

The Scottish Tartans World Register. A commercial organisation with no official standing.
Destination Scotland's "tartan finder" – had a database of thousands of tartan GIFs.
www.holestone.net/tartan/mktartan.html: Robert Bradford's tartan page, describing his mktartan program, which you could download and compile (it was in C). It took as input a .TDF (Tartan Definition Format) file. This page also had a link http://www.holestone.net/tartan/tdf/ to his directory containing the .TDF files which are used used by Nick Wedd's program.
The Scottish Tartans Society. This had a database of 3000 tartan definitions, which you could search. When it said e.g. B16, G16, B2, G16, K16, B16, Y4 the corresponding TDF pattern was b16(g16b2g16k16b16)y4.
www.io.com/~acroyear/XTartan.html: Joseph Shelby's XTartan program.
tartangenerator.com A downloadable tartan generator program
A scouting page, with a cgi program to generate a tartan neckerchief that has been defined in a format like this: Y2 #060:12 300:8 X0:40 #000066:40 X0:62 X1:8
Types of Tartan. Some readable history of tartans, and an explanation of thread counts.