Welcome!
Tartan is a symbol associated with
Scottish heritage the world over. Commonly referred to as "plaid," a
tartan is a unique design of colored stripes running in both the warp and weft
(vertical and horizontal) of the cloth, to create a pleasing pattern of both
solid colors and "half tones" where two colors cross. Tartan designs have
long been a traditional part of Scottish Highland clothing. Over the past
two centuries, tartans have been used symbolically, with named tartans being
worn to show affiliation with a particular family, group, or place. Most
people are aware of clan tartans, worn to show your descent from one of the
great Scottish clans, such as MacDonald, MacGregor, Stewart, Cameron, Campbell
or MacLeod (to name but a few). However, tartans have also been named for
places.
Some of these district tartans are
older even than the well known clan tartans. The tartan for the city of
Aberdeen, for instance, can be documented to 1794. People wear district
tartans to show where they are from, where they currently reside, or their
ancestral place of origin. There are district tartans for many cities,
shires, and regions in Scotland, but with the mass migration of Scots abroad,
the tradition of district tartans has spread across the Atlantic. Every
Canadian Province has a tartan affiliated with it.
The first tartan designed for an
American State was the Maine tartan, designed by Sol Gilis in 1964.
Designed in 1981, the Carolina tartan was the second state tartan to be
designed. Today, over half of the states in the US have tartans, many of
which, including the Carolina tartan, have been officially adopted by their
state's government.
The Carolina tartan is the
official tartan for the states of North and South Carolina. Both states
have passed legislation formally adopting this tartan as a state symbol.
This web page exists to provide the public with information about the Carolina
tartan, to encourage its use as a state symbol, especially within the
Scottish-American communities, and to promote the Scottish heritage of the
Carolinas.
