Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 20, 1994                   TAG: 9412200060
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: STEVE URQUHART SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A TALE OF NEW TARTANS

``I just wanted something that no one else had,'' he said.

Tartan - or what everyone in this country calls plaid - once was the fabric of the Scottish Highlands. The colorful cloth, from which kilts are made, grew up in the mountain valleys of Scotland and came to be identified with the clans, or families, who controlled the glens.

Small, a Roanoke lawyer, asked his father, Jim, to design a new tartan in 1988.

Retired from the Army and civil service, the elder Small has been a member of the Scottish Tartans Society for 20 years. The family descended from an 18th-century Highland weaver named John Small.

Jim Small and his wife, Betty, got to work, deciding on colors from a very local source - the Blue Ridge Mountains in spring. After all, the mountains served as inspiration for the tartans of Bonnie Scotland.

With two of their friends, John ``Kitt'' Hess and Gary Fitzsimmons, the Smalls created a design for the sett - the actual pattern - on paper. Jean Oxley, a weaver from Fincastle, added autumn colors, and with her loom, translated an idea into wool.

The result: Orange-red, pale yellow, lavender and muted shades of green; the colors of the Blue Ridge Mountains in autumn and in spring.

With wool in hand, Marc Small then looked for an expert who would give it his seal of approval. He turned to J. Charles ``Scotty'' Thompson of Arlington, who was attending the 1989 Blue Ridge Highlands Festival, at McDonald's Farm on the Explore Park grounds.

Before his death, Thompson was considered the foremost authority on tartans in North America. He was author of "So You're Going to Wear the Kilt," co-author of "Scotland's Forged Tartans" and was a frequent visitor to Scottish Games throughout the country.

Jim Small then registered the Blue Ridge Highlands tartan with the Scottish Tartans Society, where a sample is now on file at its research center and museum in Comrie, Scotland, near Perth. A small notice was published in "Highlander" magazine. All this led, in 1990, to Marc Small's kilt, made from the new tartan. So now that he's savored the experience for a while, he is letting the secret out: There is now a Blue Ridge Highlands tartan!

So if you have a Scottish connection, but are unsure of a clan affiliation, this new district tartan may be for you.

Or if you've always wanted a kilt or kilt-skirt or are just interested in a very warm scarf or blanket in the muted colors of the Scottish Highlands and the Blue Ridge Mountains, it's time to pay the piper, uh, make that weaver. Jean Oxley can be reached in Fincastle at 992-4979.

Steve Urquhart, a library clerk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, has had a lifelong interest in things Scottish.