Consider this a cautionary tale, and a reason why impreciseness in terminology (which is rampant in the tartan world) can be so hazardous.

We (the Scottish Tartans Museum) had a phone order placed by someone who wanted a kilt in a certain tartan that was not generally available and would require custom weaving. This person wanted a full eight yard kilt, in heavy weight. With the tartan being custom woven, it was going to be an expensive kilt.

The tartan requested is actually a fairly simple blue/gree/black tartan with a white stripe. No special complicated colors, etc. The client requested the tartan in the modern colors. Easy enough.

We had the cloth woven, had the kilt made, and it was recently delivered. Here's where the saga begins. We get a complaint from the client because the tartan was woven "too dark." It should have been lighter. The client sent links to web sites picturing the tartan, all in lighter "ancient" colors.

The client claims that we are at fault for not knowing what the tartan is supposed to look like.

Of course this client is confused as to the color terminology of the tartans. The images sent were all of the ancient colors. The client requested the modern colors, which is what we provided.

In the client's defense, of the three web sites linked to, two of them simply showed the image labelled "X tartan" while one (Scotweb's store, as it happened to be) actually labelled it "X tartan, modern" despite the fact that the image shown was clearly in the ancient color scheme. No wonder the client was confused.

However, in our defense, there is no way we can be responsible for mislabelling of tartan images on other companies' web sites.

In the client's defense, we did not ask for images verifying the colors desired before we had the tartan woven. In our defense, it's a fairly simply blue/black/green tartan and the client seemed fairly knowledgable on the phone and specifically requested "modern" so we never felt that verification was required. Now we know.

In the end, what we provided was exactly what the client asked for, but what the client asked for was not exactly what the client actually wanted. All because of confusion as to the color scheme of the tartan.

Lesson -- never assume people know what they are talking about when it comes to tartan terminology, even when they seem like they know. Always send an image of what you want for verification, especially when requesting expensive custom work. Even when it seems like an obvious, easy tartan, it never hurts to verify.

I would never have thought this would have been such an issue with a simple blue/black/green tartan in the modern colors, till I saw Scotweb's site showed an image of the ancient colors, labelled "modern". My client most likely saw that, and assumed that was what we would be providing. As I said, we cannot be responsible for what is shown on other web sites, but now that I see this, I understand where the confusion came from.