Houndstooth, houndstooth check or hound's tooth (and similar spellings), also known as dogstooth, dogtooth or dog's tooth, is a duotone textile pattern characterized by broken checks

Check (fabric)

A check is a pattern consisting of crossed horizontal and vertical lines forming squares.-Etymology:...

 or abstract four-pointed shapes, often in black and white, although other colours are used. The classic houndstooth pattern is an example of a tessellation

Tessellation

A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art...

.

A smaller scale version of the pattern can be referred to as puppytooth.

Design and history

Houndstooth checks originated in woven wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 cloth

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 of the Scottish Lowlands

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, but are now used in many other materials. The traditional houndstooth check is made with alternating bands of four dark and four light threads in both warp

Warp (weaving)

In weaving cloth, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns that are held in tension on a frame or loom. The yarn that is inserted over-and-under the warp threads is called the weft, woof, or filler. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end or end. Warp means "that which is thrown...

 and weft/filling

Weft

In weaving, weft or woof is the yarn which is drawn through the warp yarns to create cloth. In North America, it is sometimes referred to as the "fill" or the "filling yarn"....

 woven in a simple 2:2 twill

Twill

Twill is a type of textile weave with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs . This is done by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a "step" or offset between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. Because of this...

, two over - two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass. In an early reference to houndstooth, De Pinna

De Pinna

De Pinna was a men's and women's high end clothier founded in 1885, in New York City, by Alfred De Pinna , a Sephardic Jew born in England. They also sold menswear-inspired clothing for women that was finely tailored. The flagship store was located at 642-50 Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street...

, a New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 based men's and women's high end clothier founded in 1885, included houndstooth checks along with gun club checks and Scotch plaids as part of its 1933 spring men's suits collection.

Examples of use

The Australian department store David Jones

David Jones Limited

David Jones Limited , colloquially known as DJs, is a high-end Australian department store chain.David Jones was founded in 1838 by David Jones, a Welsh immigrant, and is claimed to be the oldest continuously operating department store in the world still trading under its original name. It...

 uses a houndstooth pattern as part of its corporate logo. The branding — a black-on-white houndstooth pattern — is one of the most recognised corporate identities in Australia. A government sponsored panel judged it in 2006 as one of Australia's top ten favourite trade marks. The origin of this motif is due to the store founder's intention not to use the name on its packaging; the store would be so well known that everyone should recognise it simply by this motif.

Houndstooth is the pattern on University of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's

Bear Bryant

Paul William "Bear" Bryant was an American college football player and coach. He was best known as the longtime head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships...

hat. Fans wear the patterned hat and other merchandise with the pattern. However, it is not a part of their official colors. It is also the pattern of an "awareness" ribbon memorializing victims and devastation caused by a tornado that struck the University of Alabama's hometown of Tuscaloosa in April 2011 and depicted (as of Nov. 2011) on the school's football field.

Yedi Houseware designed a line of travel mugs that features a large-scale graphic print of the houndstooth pattern in several colors.