Drummond on Tartan Dictionary

ΔTartan: how far apart are two tartans?

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every cloth page in the Dictionary carries a nearest tartans table: the most similar cloths in the whole corpus, each with a number in the ΔTartan column. This post explains what that number measures — why a faded, two-hundred-year-old kilt sits a whisker from its own younger self while two tartans that share most of their colours sit far apart.

Judged the way a weaver would

A tartan is a small palette deployed in a strict order, and that is how ΔTartan reads it. Each sett becomes a colour ladder: its colours are grouped into hue families (red, green, blue…), ranked dark-to-light within each family, and split by prominence into the ground — the broad foundation colours that set the cloth's character — and the decoration — the thin overstripes and dark accents laid over it.

The Drummonds of Megginch Tartan Collection

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For two centuries the Drummonds of Megginch have worn one tartan, and for two centuries no two weavings of it have been quite the same. The collection held at Megginch Castle — a plaid, three kilts, a child's kilt, even a carpet — is the same design at different scales, in different dyes, at different states of fading. This post gathers the whole collection in one place: every artefact, every thread count, every shade we have measured, and a printable poster of the lot.

Does a castle make a clan? The Drummonds' seats over time

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Dictionary already draws a line between a Clan and a Family. A Clan is a surname-and-territory grouping — Drummond; a Family is a set of tartans carried by one branch over more than a couple of generations — Drummond of Megginch, Drummond of Perth. That second name is the interesting part. "of Megginch", "of Perth" is a territorial designation: it names land. And land, in the Scottish tradition, usually means a seat — a castle.