Tartan proliferation -- good or bad?

[OC Richard]

The More the Merrier, I say.

I'll admit that I'm baised, in that I have a kilt in a tartan I devised. (I rarely wear it...it's 9 yards of heavyweight stuff.)

We have a long way to go to get back to the "tartan proliferation" of the old days, when each piece of cloth that came off the loom was unique, there being no concept of fixed designs.

Cool... I followed the link to the tartan designer site and did a version of the Cornish tartan I've tinkered with for a while.

The two symbols of Cornwall are the St Pirin flag (a white cross on a black flag) and the black shield bearing a number of gold "bezants" (discs, circles).

You can't do a shield so it has to become a square, and the number of bezants has to increase to twelve due to the nature of tartan.

But if that's all you use you end up with a black tartan with one wide white stripe and four narrow yellow stripes, an ugly result.

So I put these elements on a pretty periwinkle blue background (Cornwall is surrounded by the sea etc) to seperate them, and I like the result.

To try to get the "bezants" looking gold rather than yellow, each is one narrow yellow stripe flanked by two "old gold" stripes.

Here it is:

[macwilkin]

I rather like that Cornish design, Richard...I like the Hunting Cornish national as well.

T.

[Brian K]

The More the Merrier, I say.

I'll admit that I'm baised, in that I have a kilt in a tartan I devised. (I rarely wear it...it's 9 yards of heavyweight stuff.)

We have a long way to go to get back to the "tartan proliferation" of the old days, when each piece of cloth that came off the loom was unique, there being no concept of fixed designs.

Cool... I followed the link to the tartan designer site and did a version of the Cornish tartan I've tinkered with for a while.

The two symbols of Cornwall are the St Pirin flag (a white cross on a black flag) and the black shield bearing a number of gold "bezants" (discs, circles).

You can't do a shield so it has to become a square, and the number of bezants has to increase to twelve due to the nature of tartan.

But if that's all you use you end up with a black tartan with one wide white stripe and four narrow yellow stripes, an ugly result.

So I put these elements on a pretty periwinkle blue background (Cornwall is surrounded by the sea etc) to seperate them, and I like the result.

To try to get the "bezants" looking gold rather than yellow, each is one narrow yellow stripe flanked by two "old gold" stripes.

I like that, Richard, and would be have been quite pleased with if I had designed it myself. It's a bold, forthright design that would be hard to miss in a crowd.

BTW, if I recall correctly, the heraldic bezant derives from gold coins minted by the Byzantine Empire which circulated throughout Europe, even in places not under the sway of the Emperor. Presumably they entered heraldry as signs of wealth and trade.

Regards,

Brian