The Scottish Tartans Authority was a group dedicated to archiving tartan designs.

The Scottish Tartans Authority was established in 1996 by members who had split from the Scottish Tartans Society. The former is now defunct, but the Scottish Tartans Authority shares its principal goals, such as education and research on tartans.

The Scottish Tartan Authority, unlike the Scottish Tartans Society, has a commercial outlook. Its primary output is the International Tartan Index, which consists of 3,500 individual tartan designs. Although, the International Tartan Index actually consists of over 6,000 entries, many of these are mistakes or duplicates, which results a much lower unique entry number. The Scottish tartan Authority works on a membership basis, where tartan industry figures can join for advice or reference to tartan design.

The Scottish tartan Authority holds status as a Scottish recognized charity. It was granted a coat of arms by the Lord Lyon King of Arms in 2004. The coat of arms consists of a white fret on a blue background, which makes allusions to both St. Andrew and the tartan weaving process. The design also features a shuttle (a device used for weaving), an ell (a measurement device) and a book. The coat of arms is also decorated with the motto "weave truth with trust".

The Scottish Tartan Society was a group dedicated to the preservation of woven tartan designs from across the globe.

The Scottish Tartan Society is a now defunct group, due to financial problems it ceased to record new tartan designs in 2000. At the time of its demise, the Scottish Tartan Society had registered close to 2,700 tartan designs. Currently, these tartan designs reside with the Scottish Tartan World Register.

The Scottish Tartan Society was first formed in 1963 by a group of scholars in the field of Highland dress and tartans. The members of this group included Capt. T Stuart Davidson, Donald Calder Stewart, Alison Stewart, James Desmond Scarlett and Davidson Stuart. It is said that the Lord Lyon King of Arms provided great encouragement to the forming of the Scottish Tartan Society.

Ultimately, the goal of the Scottish Tartan Society was to recover and record every tartan known across the world. This quest led them to retrieve designs from private collections, museums, clan tartans and even Scottish tartan artifices. The Scottish Tartan Society also promoted continuing research of traditional Highland dress and assisted in the design and development of new tartans. The Scottish Tartan Society quickly received the status of recognized charity and was also granted its own coat of arms in 1976, by the Lord Lyon King of Arms. The Scottish Tartan Society was also responsible for establishing a tartan museum in Highlands, North Carolina in the United States, though it was moved to Franklin North Carolina in 1994.