The Catalunya Escocia Tartan

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Catalunya Escocia Tartan, Catalunya Tartan, david mcgill, International Tartans

Letter published in The National Newspaper Thursday 8th August

It may interest you to know that the good people of Catalonia actually have their own tartan. Commissioned by Catalans in Edinburgh the Catalunya Escocia tartan is registered no. 11163 on the Scottish Register of Tartans. The colours are based on the ‘Estelada’, the flag of the independence movement in Catalonia.

It was launched at a fashion show in Glasgow, the occasion being the ‘Football Fashionistas’ fashion show at the second Tartan & Turban Burns Supper at the Thistle Hotel in aid of ‘Show Racism the Red Card.’ It represented Barcelona.

The event was organised by the Sikh community in the West of Scotland and compered by Hardeep Sing Kholi. His fee was a kilt in the Spirit of India tartan.

 

The Spirit of UKRAINE Tartan

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SCOTLAND and UKRAINE

Luhansk, or Lugansk in Ukraine, as it is known by its majority Russian-speaking population, was, in fact, established by Scots. “Brother Scots!” declares the “Luhansk is Scotland” campaign. “The time has come to blow the pipes and come out in favour of reunion with the motherland. God Save the Queen.”

 

A humorous manifesto, published by local newspaper V Gorode, sets out the case. “We all know that Luhansk and the Luhansk region owe their existence to the Scottish engineer Charles Gascoigne,” it says. “It was he who explored our seams of coal and ore and who laid the foundations for our glorious industrial land. The industrious nature of Scottish families formed the basis of the hardworking character of modern Luhansk people. We think of Luhansk as a true Scottish city.”

 

It was, in fact, a Scotsman, Charles Gascoigne – known locally as Karl Karlovich Gaskoin – who founded Luhansk in 1795 and ran it, as a factory settlement, till 1806. His statue still stands in the city’s centre. A shareholder of the famous Carron works in Falkirk, Gascoigne was one of a huge number of Scots entrepreneurs, engineers and other experts who served the then Russian empire in the 18th century. Many came from the Falkirk area. In Luhansk, they lived in a special colony on the new town’s main drag, called “English Street”.

 

As early as the eighteenth century Semen Desnytskyi, a Ukrainian economist and lawyer, studied at Glasgow University. A significant number of the Ukrainians who came to the UK as a result of the Second World War initially resided in Scotland, where they were employed mainly in agriculture.

The Spirit of Ukraine tartan takes its colours from the national flag of Ukraine and is registered on the Scottish Register of Tartans No 12125

The Malawi tartan

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Colin Cameron and his wife Alison return to Malawi to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of his arrival in what was then the Preotectorsate of Nyasaland. A former Cabinet Minister in the first Malawian government and 16 years as Malawi’s Honorary Consul in Scotland Colin presented gifts of Malawi tartan scarves and ties and Golden Thistle badges to his hosts.

The MALAWI tartan is registered no. 3221 on the Scottish Register of Tartans. The colours are a combination of those in the flags of Malawi and Scotland. It is one of twenty-four tartans in the ‘Tartans for Africa’ range used to promote African countries internationally, whilst providing a valuable source of funds for humanitarian projects.

A number of Government Ministers, MP’s and MSP’s have presented Malawi tartan cloth and accessories to their counterparts in Malawi, and dozens of schools and charitable organisations in Scotland have been able to use the Malawi tartan to raise funds for a variety of projects throughout Malawi.

 

The JOHN MUIR Tartan

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The JOHN MUIR  tartan was created in 1998 for the 150th anniversary of John Muir’s arrival in the United States and launched at a reception in the San Francisco Bay area City of Pleasanton in 2002, when Muir’s grandson accepted an inscribed tartan clock and a picture frame on behalf of the Muir family.

The colours in the John Muir Tartan were chosen to represent what Muir first saw, and invited us all to see, long before man walked on the moon: the fragile earth spinning silently through infinite space.”

The designer, David McGill, likes to refer to Muir as the “First Citizen of the Universe.” A postcard of the Tartan and an imaginary letter from Muir to his wife Louie were distributed at the photographic exhibition of the photographer Ken Paterson “In the Footsteps of John Muir” at Federal Hall in New York City in April 2013.

 

The INDIANA tartan

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The inspiration behind the Indiana tartan was a great ‘Hoosier’ who became a great Scot, Wallace Allen (Wally) Shaw from Crawfordsville. At this year’s Columbus Scottish Festival International Tartans offered an Indiana tartan kilt or kilted skirt as a raffle prize in his memory. Since raffles are not legal in the State of Indiana the Governor had to give his consent, and the lucky winner was Dorothy ‘Dot’ Scott of Jeffersonville who is pictured wearing her made-to-measure skirt. The proceeds from the raffle will help to stage next year’s Festival.

Wally Shaw was a philosopher, minister, teacher and published author who introduced the philosophy and the study of world religions to Scottish schools. He founded ‘Operation Friendship’  and ‘The Radicals’ theatre group who performed five of his plays at the Edinburgh International Festival.

http://www.livingphilosophy.org.uk/

The SUDAN tartan

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Such has been the demand the Khartoum Caledonian Society has just taken possession of 100 metres of International Tartans ‘Sudan’ tartan.

‘Of course’ says Chieftain Archie Frame, ‘ the expatriate Scots like to dress up for their St Andrew’s Night ceilidh, Hogmanay celebrations, and their annual Burns Supper, but we are attracting members and guests from a number of European and Asian countries who wanted to join in, and many native Sudanese as well’.

‘Although kilts and kilted skirts will be made in Scotland, accessories will be manufactured here in Sudan in accordance with International Tartan’s business model, which is designed to create awareness and sustainable employment in African communities’. By using the colours of the flag of Sudan in the design, International Tartans has provided Sudan with a unifying national emblem’.

  

The SUDAN tartan

Blue for the Blue Nile, St Andrew and Scotland;

Green for Sufi robes, the woodlands, and cropped lands;

Red for the Sea, the dust, and the sands of Sudan;

White for the White Nile, and the Peace (after Umdurman).

 

©  Robert Neil Munro,

Robert Neil Munro of Dirleton, Scotland, and Khartoum

SRI LANKA

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The new SRI LANKA tartan is the latest addition to the International Tartans collection. Although privately commissioned it will be available to anyone with links to Sri Lanka. The design incorporates the colours in the Sri Lankan national flag.

The Indiana Tartan

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A while ago, we were contacted by Anne, a Scottish lady who lives with her husband and children in the state of Indiana in the USA. With the occasion of the bicentennial of the founding of the State, Anne, who has a degree from the Textile College in Galashiels, asked us for some Indiana Tartan cloth which we passed to her mother in Edinburgh to take it over to her.

We were delighted to receive this image from Anne via our Facebook page – she has done an amazing job with these Seasons21 designs.

The Sunderland tartan

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Formed as Sunderland and District Teachers Association by Scotsman James Allan in 1879, Sunderland AFC have fielded hundreds of Scots in their 137-year history including twenty-two Scottish internationalist and several legends of the game including, in recent times, Ian Porterfield, scorer of the winning goal in the 1973 Cup Final, Jim Baxter and Ally McCoist. Such is the bond between Sunderland and Scotland that in 1895 when they played Heart of Midlothian at Tynecastle Park in Edinburgh in the ‘Championship of the World’ title match as champions of their respective leagues, all 22 players were Scots (even the referee was a Scot). Sunderland won 5-3 and fielded ten full Scottish internationalists. Hearts could only field five.

The appointment of David Moyes as manager of Sunderland AFC sees a continuation of this extraordinary link between Scotland and Sunderland. He is the tenth Scot to manage the ‘Black Cats’. To commemorate this, International Tartans is offering a free kilt (or kilted skirt) in the

Sunderland tartan* to the first person who can answer the following questions:

1.Sunderland Association Football Club have played under two other names. What are they?

2. Sunderland AFC have played in four countries other than England. Which are they?

3. What is the link between James Allan, Sunderland AFC’s founder, and Robert Burns the poet.

*The colours of the Sunderland tartan are taken from the red, white and black of the team colours.

The CATALUNYA ESCOCIA Tartan

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“Today, the Catalan Government is preparing to defy Spain’s constitutional court by debating the findings of a working group on sovereignty, nine months after the Catalan Parliament set out its 18-month roadmap to independence.

Once the Catalan people have the chance to vote and decide their own political future everyone will agree on Catalonia’s right to take the steps we are taking , and on the need to find Catalonia its rightful place in the EU and as a reliable partner in the international community.”

Scotland is with you. Viva Cataluña libre!