Plate No. 038 · tartan

Shepherd's Check

Shepherd's check is a small, even check of dark and light wool, the oldest and plainest member of the tartan family. Historically the light squares were simply untreated sheep's wool and the dark squares the wool of a black sheep or yarn dyed with bark, so the cloth could be made with little or no dyestuff at all. Check fragments of this type survive from Roman Britain, and the pattern was popularized from the 1820s by Border Scots including Walter Scott, whose checked trousers set off a London fashion. At small scale and woven on the twill it is also the direct ancestor of houndstooth, whose teeth appear when the check's color order meets the twill float.