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