Tartan Exhibition, V&A, Dundee
Posted in Exhibitions at 19:13 on 5 October 2023
The V&A, Dundee, is holding an Exhibition about tartan. It goes on until Jan 2024. It’s worth seeing.
We visited it in August (and again with our eldest son, his wife and daughter, in September.)
One of the exhibits is the oldest piece of tartan known:-
There are many examples of tartan being used for promotional or decorative purposes:-
These can go back a long time:-
However I did not expect to see a NATO tartan nor one commemorating the SALT Treaty:-
Tartan is not an exclusively Scottish style. Below is a Burmese one:-
Beside that was a Masai one:-
Madras tartans were once thought to have been inspired by Scots but they are in fact indigenous to India:-
Tartans from Balmoral testify to Queen Victoria’s enthusiasm for Scottish culture:-
Modern takes on tartan. (There’s a Dundee FC strip in the background here):-
Tartan – the V&A Dundee | Pining for the West
24 October 2023 at 23:57
[…] Although I enjoyed the exhibition I felt that there were some glaring misses. If I had been setting it up I would have asked for donations of stage clothes from Rod Stewart, The Bay City Rollers (a fan donated her tartan trousers) tartan was popular among punk bands. The film below is about the making of Billy Connolly’s kilt, they got him into one at last! Honestly someone should have ironed or steamed it as it’s badly wrinkled now, it’s a real shame it wasn’t taken good care of. You can see Jack’s post on the exhibition here. […]