Although individual tartans have become synonymous with Scotland and Scottish clans and families in particular, they were originally a style of cloth which was intended to be decorative. They had patterns that were popular within certain districts where they were woven, and relied upon a limited number of colour dyes. This led to the idea of ‘district tartans’: being the original association between the land, the community and its cloth. Where there was a strong clan within a district, then visitors from other areas might well have been recognised as of a clan from their tartans