Check (pattern)

Cloth of green gingham in check pattern
The original check pattern was the ancient oriental chess-board
A heraldic escutcheon chequy gules and argent
Stylish check patterned Zentai

A check (also checker, Brit: chequer) is a pattern of modified stripes consisting of crossed horizontal and vertical lines forming squares.

Etymology

The word is derived from the ancient Persian language word shah, meaning "king", from the oriental game of chess, played on a squared board, particularly from the expression shah mat, "the king is dead", in modern chess parlance "check-mate". The word entered the French language as echec in the 11th century,[1] thence into English.

Variations

Buffalo check or buffalo plaid has black hashes on a red background. In the United States, it got this name around 1850 when a designer at the Woolrich mill at Chatham's Run in Pennsylvania (who owned a herd of buffalo) copied a pattern known as "Rob Roy" in Scotland. "No. 5310-402 in the Woolrich middleweight fabric collection" became associated with lumberjacks as those nearby in the Pennsylvania woods were the main customers for the woolen shirts that used it. It became popular in mainstream fashion in the United States in the 90s and 2010s.[2][3]

Other uses

The check pattern is also used in many areas other than textile styles, for example: on a board used by the mediaeval Exchequer to perform financial computations, and on a board used for playing checkers and chess, and in heraldry.

See also

Sources

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Checkered.
  1. ↑ Larousse Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise, Lexis, Paris, 1993
  2. ↑ Robert Klara (12 November 2015). "Why the 165-Year-Old Buffalo Check Is 2015’s Hot Holiday Pattern". Ad Week.
  3. ↑ Laura Serino (25 November 2013). "A Brief History of Buffalo Plaid". Maine Today.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.