Douglas

The colours on record are green, dark blue, black, light blue and white. The register's threadcount is not shown without a login, so this site has not read it. The register states the count was checked against D.C. Stewart's Setts of the Scottish Tartans (1950), which is a mid-twentieth-century check of an older weaver's pattern, not an original document.

The colours shown here are approximations. Different weavers shift the shades, and a Douglas in a modern ground and an ancient ground can look quite unlike each other while being the same sett.

The register credits the pattern to Wilsons of Bannockburn and says it appeared in the firm's 1819 list under the number 184 and is also known as Wilson's No. 148. The two numbers are both given in the register's own notes and the sources read do not explain why a record would carry both.

A second register entry, Douglas, Green (Wilsons'), quotes a list Wilsons sent to Logan about 1830 saying No. 148 had been sold as Douglas for a considerable time. That places the use of the name in the early nineteenth century, in a commercial catalogue.

The register says the name Douglas was certainly attached to it by 1880, when it appeared as Douglas Hunting in Clans Originaux. Nothing read for this page shows the Douglas chiefs choosing it, or the family wearing it before the weaver sold it under their name.

The register gives a short run of reference points. A weaver's list of 1819, a statement of about 1830 that the cloth had long been sold as Douglas, the 1880 appearance as Douglas Hunting, and the 1950 threadcount check. After that it records later variants under the same surname: alternative threadcounts, colourways from West Coast Woollen Mill and Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and Douglas of Roxburgh, a 1984 design by Jack Dalgety that the register says is not a stock item for any weaver.

The Green (Wilsons') entry also says the Gurkhas used darker shades of the design. The sources read here do not say which units or when, so the military use is recorded as the register's note and not developed further.

"Douglas Hunting" is the 1880 name. "Douglas Modern", "Ancient" and "Weathered" are weaver colourways, and the register has no entries under those names. "Douglas Ancient Dress (WCWM)" and "Douglas Ancient Red" are separate register entries from named mills.

"Black Douglas" is a trap. The register lists Douglas, Black (SRT 1029, dated 1920) and says it is often called Black Douglas but that the historical Black Douglas, the medieval family, is unconnected with it.

The register classes the main Douglas as Clan/Family and calls it the accepted Douglas tartan, which is its own judgement. It does not say when a chief approved it. The clan record for the Douglases sits on its own page, and a Douglas surname is a custom, not a condition.

The register's twenty-four Douglas results include personal tartans for individuals and families, which are not clan setts. The clan and trade entries are documented very differently from the accepted pattern:

• Douglas (alternative threadcount): a variation on the accepted Douglas, given the same 1819 date as the parent but with no designer.
• Douglas (WCWM): a Fashion entry by West Coast Woollen Mill, recorded as 2002, with no further note.
• Douglas Ancient Dress (WCWM): the note says a sample was donated by W. H. Johnstone of Skippack, USA, and that this is a trade sett called Ancient Dress Douglas, marketed by West Coast Woollen Co of Vancouver since 1981. It adds that the archived sample contains grey that may be read as green.
• Douglas Ancient Red: Edinburgh Woollen Mill, 2002, no details.
• Douglas Variation: a trade sett from a Glasgow retailer, Peter Henderson, the register notes, a firm famous for bagpipes that was no longer in business in 2006.
• Douglas, (Brown): found in the McBain and Bishop sample book (page 118). The register suggests it may be a confusion with the normal Douglas, in reproduction shades.
• Douglas of Roxburgh: a 1984 design by Jack Dalgety, not a stock item for any weaver.

Only two of these are clan designs by a documented source with an early date: the accepted Douglas and the Green (Wilsons') record. The rest are trade, fashion or sample-book entries whose connection to the family is that a weaver chose the name.

The register's own notes suggest a practical way to sort them.

1. Wilsons-derived, early nineteenth century: the accepted Douglas (SRT 1034) and Douglas, Green (Wilsons'). Both point to the firm's list of 1819 and the pattern numbered 148 in the Wilson records.
2. Copies and reproductions of that sett: the alternative threadcount and Douglas (Brown), which the register itself treats as variations or confusions with the accepted tartan.
3. Mill and retailer colourways: Ancient Dress, Ancient Red, the West Coast Woollen Mill fashion entry and the Henderson trade sett. They are labelled by shade or mill and cannot be dated to the family.
4. Different designs under the surname: Douglas Grey from the Vestiarium Scoticum, Douglas, Black (1920) and Douglas of Roxburgh (1984).

If you want the pattern the register treats as the Douglas tartan, ask for SRT 1034 by number, and look at the colours: green, blue and black, with light blue and white lines. A cloth sold as "Ancient" Douglas may be that sett in lighter shades, or it may be the separate Ancient Dress trade sett from Vancouver, and the label alone does not say which.