This Seattle Shop Carries A Full Line Of Scottish Stuff From Shawls To Kilts

-- The Scottish Shopper imports store, 146 S.W. 152nd St., Burien. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Take Burien/SeaTac Exit off Interstate 5. Head west on Southwest 148th Street to First Avenue South. Go south four blocks and then west on Southwest 152nd Street. Turn right after Winchell's Donuts. 242-0291.

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Mohair shawls as thick as your wrist. Embossed tins of buttery shortbread. Tooled leather, or silver-trimmed badger-hair pouches (sporrans) in which to stash your shillings when your kilt has no pockets: There's more to the Scottish Shopper than bolts of tartans and books about your clan.

Ask owner Jack Ironside, the tall, silver-haired Scot who has headed this import store, long on First Avenue South, and now on Southwest 152nd Street, for 30 years. (He's been at the current address since November.)

``We're the only complete supplier of Scottish goods in Seattle,'' he says with pride. His blue eyes twinkle, his cigarette smoke curls up toward the clan crests on the wall. ``We supply people and stores throughout the U.S. and do a big mail-order business. We have over half-a-million dollars in stock. We have to. It takes six months or more to order anything from the British Isles!''

He has help from his adult sons, Angus and Jack. But you'll almost always still find the senior Ironside, bagpipe teacher and one-time leader of Seattle Scottish Boys' Band (world champions at the 1969 competitions in Edinburgh), out on the sales floor, or back in the stockroom.

If you have even the merest drop of Scots blood, have married it, or wish you had, Ironside will happily pass the time with you, impart any information he can about Celtic lore, music, or gear. Born in Canada of Scottish emigrants, Ironside welcomes all. It's a tradition begun by his dad, who in 1916 began Seattle's first Scottish pipe band.

Curious about those funny-looking bagpipes? They start at about $1,000 but go as high as $6,000, for the top-of-the-line instrument. Want to hear bagpipe music or Scots songs? Pop in a tape from the store rack. You even can buy instruction in Scottish dance steps along with shoes (ghillies), skirt, blouse and cap (tam).

``We do have to carry a certain amount of Scots trash,'' Ironside winks, indicating the trinkets - the linen tea towels, tartan-covered Scotty dogs, crested ashtrays and pewter pins by the front window. ``People seem to want them. The stationery with clan names and crest also are popular.''

But he also points with pride to the cashmere sweaters and lap robes softer than baby skin. ``Don't know how they do it, but the British produce the softest wool anywhere. It absolutely does not scratch.''

Be sure to have a look at those antler- or carved-wood handled daggers (dirks) in their silver- and jewel-encrusted scabbards. Or the handsome, tempered-steel swords, which Ironside says sell in quantity.

``Not for fighting,'' he hastens to add, ``but for Scottish dancing.''

There's more to dancing, then, than flashing feet and rippling pleats!