Weathered, Muted Hunting or Ancient tartan?

[ChromeScholar]

The last kilt I bought was a SWK standard in Weathered Mackenzie. To refresh your memory, the kilt in question is on the left...



Ok, I went to the Clan MacKenzie site where I found the same tartan listed as

1. Ancient MacKenzie (in the wool scarves section of their shop)
2. Muted Brown (in the Clan Tartans section, where it is also referred to as weathered or hunting)
3. to make it even more confusing, if you go into the tartan ties section of the shop, they show the same four tartans as in the scarves section, but with weathered and ancient reversed.

I'm so confused

[Mael Coluim]

Oh, well Chromescholar, I think life is confusing most of the time. Looks like you have found an antidote to geting a clearer head. If I'm right the photo is in a pub! int: Great photo. It shows the three styles of sporran wear; belt hangers, chain strap and leather.

[ChromeScholar]

The photo was taken at the Sonoran Scotsmen's last kilt night.

[Wompet]

Well, looking at my Hunting Robertson (same background pattern as the Hunting Mackenzie, with the position of the read and white overstripes reversed) Ancient - the hues are wrong for it to be Ancient.

I would say Weathered, but the red and white overstripes look too bright (unweathered?) - look at the Weather Mackenzie on the Locharron website for comparison.

[Cage]

The image on the tartan scarves looks mirror'd. The modern and dress appear switched as well.
This link has helped me to grasp the colors.
http://www.albanach.org/colors.html

[davidlpope]

Naming of different color variations of the same tartan can be confusing. Matt Newsome has written a great article about it here that is the best discussion that I've come across:

http://www.albanach.org/colors.html

If you're not inclined to read the link the overview is that all these color schemes have been developed by tartan mills to describe the particular shades of colors used to weave different versions of the same tartan. For example, Lochcarron describes their bright, vivid, "Crayola" color version of a tartan as 'Modern', their lighter, more "pastel" shade version as 'Ancient', and their muted, blue becomes gray/green becomes brown version as 'Weathered'. House of Edgar, another mill, uses the terms 'Modern', 'Ancient', and 'Muted', although in their 'Muted' version the blues and greens are more recognizable as blue and green. Strathmore uses the terms 'Modern' and 'Old Colours' and doesn't really have a muted/weathered color scheme, although they do have some limited tartans in shades that approximate the dyes used by Wilsons of Bannockburn, an early tartan producer. D. C. Dalgleish uses the term 'Reproduction' to describe a muted color palette.

The tartan you have on is the MacKenzie, now adopted by Clan MacKenzie, but originally used by a regiment within the British Army. If we go further than that to describe the "color scheme", what you're wearing is a closest match to the Lochcarron 'Weathered', although my guess is that SWK uses a different weaver for their tartan, so there may be slight differences in color.

Above all, a good tip is to remember that a tartan is defined by the sequence and proportion of colors woven into the pattern and not a particular shade of color.

Cordially,
David

[ChromeScholar]

Yes, but the clan website describes the same tartan, with the same colors as Ancient, Weathered, Muted, and Hunting, depending on where you look.

[davidlpope]

Simply put, the clan website's captions for the different tartan images are confusing and a bit misleading. Their designation of the muted/weathered color schemes as "hunting" versions of a tartan which is already green and blue just doesn't make sense. Typically a "hunting" tartan is a tartan which is primarily blue and green (although sometimes brown in the case of "Hunting" or "Brown" Scott and Hunting Fraser) that is adopted by a clan when the general clan tartan is primarily red. For example, the Grant clan uses the Government or Black Watch tartan as their hunting tartan because the general Grant tartan is red. Under that generally accepted methodology, the MacKenzie clan tartan is already a "hunting" tartan in as much as it is primarily green and blue, so there would be no reason to design another tartan to be the clan "hunting sett." Even if a clan did decide to design a hunting tartan it would traditionally be a different pattern, not just a different color scheme of the general clan tartan. Compare the different clan and hunting tartans for Clans Ross, Grant, MacMillan, MacLeod, etc.

Although the pics on the clan website do look very similar, in real life there is a recognizable difference of shades in the HOE 'Muted', Lochcarron and HOE 'Ancient', Strathmore 'Old Colours', and Lochcarron 'Weathered'. Unfortunately, the website does not do a good job of using pictures which accurately reflect the true colors of the fabric. If you can get your hands on a swatchbook from the different mills most of this confusion about the different color schemes (except the erroneous "hunting" tartan designation that I have discussed above) will lift like fog when the sun comes up.

Cordially,
David

[Jock Scot]

Another example of a green and blue,mainly,tartan that seems to have gained a "hunting" title is MacLeod of Harris and I think this is a recent innovation.It may be to help avoid confusion with the MacLeod of Lewis tartan,although how anyone could confuse those two tartans,lord only knows!

[Nighthawk]

Hey!! Wow! I ordered mine on Friday. I should have it tomorrow. It looks good on you- it should look killer on me!