MacMillan Old Clan Tartan
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern GKGKGKRGGKGK.
Part of the MacMillan tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 12 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=2025
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1847 The term 'ancient' normally describes a change in colour that can be applied to any tartan. In the case of MacMillan the 'ancient' form involves a more radical change, justifying the traditional use of the adjective in the name of the tartan. James Logan, co-author of 'The Clans of the Scottish Highlands' (1847), states that this version is identical with Buchanan. The thread count was deduced by J. Cant from the illustration by R.R. MacIan in the same work. In 1951 Lieut. General Sir Gordon MacMillan, then G.O.C. Scottish Command, was recognised as chief of the clan by the Lord Lyon.
4 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1847 — MacMillan Old Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- undated — MacMillan Ancient (register-of-tartans, record)
The term 'ancient' normally describes a change in colour that can be applied to any tartan. In the case of MacMillan the 'ancient' form involves a more radical change, justifying the traditional use of the adjective in the name of the tartan. James Logan, co-author of 'The Clans of the Scottish Highlands' (1847), states that this version is identical with Buchanan. The thread count was deduced by J. Cant from the illustration by R.R. MacIan in the same work. - undated — MacMillan, Ancient (weddslist, record)
- undated — MacMillan Ancient (a) (weddslist, record)
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- House of Tartan
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/house-of-tartan/data.csv
- data date
- 1847 (this record)
- licence
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- House of Tartan
the weaver/retailer's database — the site is now offline; the URL is kept as the ultimate source's identity - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 2657
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 2025
Thread count
G/4 K2 G36 K2 G4 K2 R24 G8 Y12 K2 Y12 K/2
One full sett is 214 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s12/g2k1g18k1g2k1r12g4y6k1y6k1~x2/