Tara (District)
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 KGRGGKWKYKRK.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 12 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=1103
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- pre 1967 — Tara (District) (tartans-authority, record)
This tartan is a colour modification of MacLean of Duart. It was said to be first recorded in 'Clan Originaux' (c.1880) as Murphy, but was so popular it was renamed "Tara" -- the earliest reference to that name 1967. see also O'Keefe. Sample in STA Johnston Collection + Lochcarron swatch + Dalgety Collection.. It has been accepted as fact for very many years that J Claude's 1880 'Clans Originaux' contained many Irish tartans. In 2003 the Tartans Authority obtained photo copies of the contents pages of the only copy known to exist and they revealed that of the 185 tartans shown, not one of them was Irish. This 'fiction' has been absorbed into tartan history unfortunately and it will take many years to eradicate.The only copy known to exist is owned by Pendleton Mills in Portland, Oregon. - 01/01/1978 — Murphy/Tara (register-of-tartans, record)
This tartan is a colour modification of MacLean of Duart. Believed for many years to have been recorded in 'Clans Originaux' (Paris, 1880) as Murphy and later renamed 'Tara' (1967). Later research suggests that none of the tartans included in Clans Originaux are Irish.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- pre 1967 (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
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - 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: 4071
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1103
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1103
Thread count
K/16 R4 K12 LY4 K4 LB4 K4 DY32 DG48 R4 DG8 K/6
One full sett is 270 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| LY | #DCBC32 #DCBC32 | oklch(80.0% 0.150 95.2) |
| DG | #053819 #053819 | oklch(30.0% 0.075 151.3) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| DY | #3A2B0D #3A2B0D | oklch(30.0% 0.049 82.0) |
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/k8r2k6ly2k2lb2k2dy16dg24r2dg4k3~x2/