Have you met Hagatha? She’s our knitted haggis, designed exclusively for V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first-ever dedicated design museum, and their current exhibition celebrating all things tartan, which runs right the way through until January 2024.
Donna was invited for a sneak peek at the Tartan catalogue before the exhibition launched earlier this year, and Hagatha’s checks were inspired by English artist Edward Bawden’s 1950’s linocut Design for Wrapping Paper (Bagpipe Player). A bold and distinctly Scottish design, the intersecting green lines reflect the tartan pattern of the piper’s kilt.
For those of you who don’t know, the haggis is the national dish of Scotland (and not a mythical creature of Scottish folklore!). A savoury sausage-like pudding, stuffed and tied at both ends, it’s traditionally served with neeps and mashed tatties (parsnips and mashed potatoes!).
It’s also one of the stars of a Burns Night supper, a yearly celebration falling on 25th January each year to commemorate the Scottish poet Robert Burns, author of the famous Address to a Haggis, which begins with the line “Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding race!”.
Our little haggis, Hagatha joins V&A Dundee’s ever-growing collection of Donna Wilson-designed creatures – Selkie, Agnes and Marmalade, all of which are made by hand in our Knit Shop less than a mile from the museum.
To celebrate her launch, and as a little taster of V&A Dundee’s fantastic exhibition, Hagatha’s shared her favourite five tartan facts with us below:
The tartan pattern is traditionally known as the sett of the tartan. The official definition of tartan is ‘a design which is capable of being woven consisting of two or more alternating coloured stripes which combine vertically and horizontally to form a repeated chequered pattern.’
There are over 3,000 setts of tartan listed on the official tartan register – including one designed especially for V&A Dundee, inspired by architect Kengo Kuma’s initial pencil concept sketches for the museum’s iconic building.
The earliest authenticated fragment of tartan found in Scotland is the Glen Affric tartan. First discovered in a peat bog in the 1980s, it has been carbon-dated to between 1500 and 1600. Coloured using natural green, brown, red and yellow dyes, it’s on display as part of the V&A’s Tartan exhibition.
Tartan was the subject of the world’s first colour photograph – a tartan ribbon to be precise. Taken by Thomas Sutton, using the three colour process developed by James Clerk Maxwell, it was presented to the Royal Institution in 1861.
Tartan truly is out of this world! Alan Bean, an American astronaut with Scottish roots, took a piece of MacBean tartan on the Apollo 12 mission to the moon, before safely returning it to earth and donating it to the St Bean Chapel in Perthshire, Scotland.
Find out more about the V&A’s Tartan exhibition here.