Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 45, 2011

The Vestiarium Scoticum (full title, Vestiarium Scoticum: from the Manuscript formerly in the Library of the Scots College at Douay. With an Introduction and Notes, by John Sobieski Stuart) was first published by William Tait of Edinburgh in a limited edition in 1842. John Telfer Dunbar, in his seminal work History of Highland Dress referred to it as "probably the most controversial costume book ever written." The book itself purported to be a reproduction, with colour illustrations, of an ancient manuscript on the clan tartans of Scottish families. Shortly after its publication, it was denounced as a forgery and the "Stuart" brothers who brought it forth, and who claimed to be the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself, were likewise denounced as imposters. It is indeed generally accepted today that neither the brothers themselves nor the Vestiarium are what they were purported to be.

Nevertheless, the role of the book in the history of Scottish tartans is immense, with many of the designs and patterns contained therein passing into the realm of "official" clan tartans. The 1842 edition of the Vestiarium had its beginnings in the late 1820s when the Sobieski Stuart brothers, then resident in Moray, Scotland, produced a copy of a document containing tartan patterns and showed it to their host, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bt. This manuscript, however, was not the one which the brothers claimed to be the basis for the later publication of the Vestiarium.