The Rowley Regis is a nice example of a concept in tartan design called under-check and over-check. Which put pretty simply is where it looks like there is a broad ‘base’ check pattern with a smaller ‘foreground’ overlaid on the top.

Rowley Regis Tartan

So for this particular tartan the broad red and yellow sections look like they have the blue, white and black stripes over them as a second layer. This over and under checking is very useful in tartan not only as a descriptive technique but as a design tool.

Firstly I took my flag proposal as inspiration, because it keeps all the heraldic meaning from the coat of arms but rationalises it down into a more coherent and simpler design (this suits flags best). It’s this increased simplicity that I sought to keep in the tartan so as to avoid a pattern that was too busy.

Then when arranging the pattern it was clear that red and yellow dominated the flag design and that should come across in the tartan. This is why red and yellow are so clearly the under-check. On the flag the red is actually the same layer as the white and black ermine so just to keep the relationship these colours become part of the over-check that overlays the red section of under-check. Similarly the blue fleur-de-lys on the lions shoulder becomes a blue over-check overlaid onto the yellow area of under-check.

The Coseley tartan takes more direction from the original coat of arms than my flag, which was derived from the same source, simply by using black in a more prominent way. Those wonderfully bold checks make a great and easily recognised symbol. I did need to be careful of how clashing the design could become so I tried to mute many of the colours – for instance using a more ‘old gold’ hue in place of vivid yellow.

Coseley Tartan

Although much more complex in this pattern the under and over checks are still very much there. In comparison to the Rowley tartan this highlights the strange processes to designing a tartan where sometimes easy meanings become complex patterns and vice-versa!

Article is written by Phillip Tibbets, researcher of Heraldic Art and co-founder of Heartland Heritagewear