Checks

Checks fail at small scale in a specific and predictable way: they turn grey. A houndstooth is a broken check made of four shapes, and once those shapes are smaller than about three millimetres the eye stops resolving them and averages the whole thing into a flat mid-tone. You have seen this on cheap phone cases. It is why they look cheap.

Every check in this family is drawn larger than its source. Houndstooth runs about eight teeth across the width instead of the thirty you would get on cloth. Estate Check is scaled until one square is roughly a fingernail. The patterns look oversized next to a jacket, and correct on a phone.

Why the tartan is cut on the bias

A tartan is defined by its sett — the repeating count of threads in each direction — and it is normally woven square. Tailors cut it on the diagonal when it has to cross a seam, because a check that meets a seam at forty-five degrees stops arguing with it.

Highland is cut the same way for the same reason. The Duo has a seam down the middle that opens and closes all day, and a tartan run square across it draws attention to the one line you would rather the eye skipped.

The quiet end and the loud end

Windowpane is a single hairline in both directions on a plain ground and almost nothing else. It is the check for someone who does not want to be wearing a check. Picnic is three squares across the whole back. Both are the same family and they are not the same decision.

Prince of Wales sits between them and is the most technically difficult print here: a glen check with a coloured overcheck sitting on top at a larger interval. Most reproductions drop the overcheck because registering it is hard. Ours keeps it, one shade off the ground, and that faint second grid is the whole character of the pattern.