MacBean Hunting Tartan

In April 2019 a clansman asked on our Facebook page about the MacBean Hunting tartan. Philip Beddows went to look it up in the Scottish Register of Tartans and could not find it. I asked my father, who was then ninety. He told me the tartan we called “hunting” had been made years before for a group of MacBeans in Colorado; he had never much liked it, but did not want to hurt the group’s feelings, “and now here we are fifty plus years later and it is assumed to be correct.”

So I wrote to the Scottish Tartans Authority: “I want to get these tartans straightened out.” Lt. Col. Peter Eslea MacDonald replied two days later: “Your email risks opening a real can of worms and one that it would be good to sort out.” He showed that our old hunting tartan was simply the clan tartan woven in duller colors, and “muting the tones but not changing the colours or sett does not constitute a different pattern.” If we wanted a hunting tartan, we should design a real one.

Philip took up the design in 2021, with Peter’s guidance. His first draft, built on the Tomatin sett, I turned down: it looked too much like a homage to the Tomatin tartan. His second was, in his words, a “union” of all the MacBean tartans:

• Olive green, from the Ancient coloring of the clan tartan and the Highland hills.
• A special dark blue, from the MacBean of Tomatin.
• Light blue, “Hughston’s Blue”, from my grandfather’s McBain Chief tartan.
• A gold stripe bounded by blue, the colors of Clan Chattan and of the Chief’s arms, in the place of the Mackintosh stripe on the Dress tartan.
• A white cross in the dark blue, “a shining star far away in space”, for Alan Bean and the Moon tartan.

Peter fine-tuned the threadcount so that it sits properly in the pleats of a kilt, with an 8½-inch sett. Lochcarron of Scotland matched the colors in their yarns and wove the first cloth in March 2022. Peter’s verdict on seeing it: “it’s really really nice.” I wore it for the first time at my inauguration on 6 August 2022, and the Scottish Register of Tartans recorded it that September.

It was the first major new tartan for our clan in more than two hundred years, and the last project my father and I worked on together. Happily, he lived long enough to see the design.

Ordering the tartan

To keep its colors true, the MacBean Hunting is woven only by Lochcarron of Scotland, and any other weaver needs the Chief’s written permission. Kilts, cloth and accessories in the MacBean Hunting, and in all the clan’s tartans, can be ordered from ScotlandShop, who source the MacBean Hunting cloth from Lochcarron. Members of the Clan MacBean Association are entitled to a 10% discount. Any member of the clan may wear it.

Philip Beddows’ own account of the design, written for the Register in 2022, is in Seanachaidh’s Notes. See also all five tartans of the clan.

— Richard McBain of McBain, 23rd Chief