The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Clan’s VERY modern makeover... with pink and turquoise tartan

- By Ashlie McAnally

A SCOTTISH clan with a new chief for the first time in 350 years is having a modern-day makeover.

Swords and thrones have been recreated and kilts will be woven from bright pink and turquoise tartan in a 21st Century take on clan culture.

After more than a decade of research, the Clan Buchanan – one of the oldest in the country, dating back to AD1010 – will inaugurate millionair­e aristocrat Lord John Michael Baillie-Hamilton Buchanan later this year after he was appointed chief.

The newly crafted jewels and updated tartan will be paraded at a ceremony with clan members from all over the world.

Lord Buchanan’s daughter Lucy, 20, designed the tartan that will form the inaugurati­on kilts while Scottish craftsmen have recreated insignia.

Last night Lady Paula Buchanan said: ‘We’ve got an opportunit­y to look at things from afresh and how the clan has changed.’

A replica of the small silver Sword of Leny – presented by King Cullen in around AD970 – is among the ‘clan jewels’ being remade by Inverness silversmit­h Roddy Young. He has also made a replica of a silver Jacobite rose – representi­ng the clan’s soul.

He along with Ron Spiers, a specialist cromach maker in Dunkeld, also made a replica of a cromach with a bear – an early symbolic animal of the clan. Clansfolk are invited to gather at Cambusmore Estate in Perthshire on October 7 and 8 for the first clan parliament for three centuries.

The last chief of Clan Buchanan was Lord Buchanan’s ancestral kinsman John Buchanan, who died in 1681 without a male heir.

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 ?? ?? PROUD HERITAGE: Scots craftsmen have made replicas of the Clan Buchanan’s silver Sword of Leny, a cromach with a bear’s head and a silver Jacobite rose
PROUD HERITAGE: Scots craftsmen have made replicas of the Clan Buchanan’s silver Sword of Leny, a cromach with a bear’s head and a silver Jacobite rose
 ?? ?? CLOSE KNIT: Lucy Buchanan with her design for the new tartan, left
CLOSE KNIT: Lucy Buchanan with her design for the new tartan, left

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