Malcolm 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 KGKGKBRBRBKGKW.
Part of the Malcolm tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 14 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=1976
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1850 (1847) There is an error in D.C.Stewarts, 'The Setts..' (1950 1st Edition) corrected in the 2nd edition (1974). The name Malcolm was established, as distinct from MacCallum, in 1770 when the 9th Chief of Poltalloch changed the family name to Malcolm. This may well be the sett on which the MacCallum was based "from the recollection of old people in Argyllshire" and which D.W. Stewart illustrated in silk in his book, 'Old and Rare..'. Wilson's of Bannockburn produced a symetrical version of the Malcolm tartan which was recorded in their 1847 pattern book. The Gold and Azure of the additional stripes can be found in the armourial bearings of the Malcolm family.
3 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1850 — Malcolm Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- undated — Malcolm #2 (register-of-tartans, record)
There is an error in D.C. Stewarts, 'The Setts..' (1950 1st Edition) corrected in the 2nd edition (1974). The name Malcolm was established, as distinct from MacCallum, in 1770 when the 9th Chief of Poltalloch changed the family name to Malcolm. This may well be the sett on which the MacCallum was based "from the recollection of old people in Argyllshire" and which D.W. Stewart illustrated in silk in his book, 'Old and Rare..'. Wilson's of Bannockburn produced a symmetrical version of the Malcolm tartan. W.& A.Smith Authenticated tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland 1850. - undated — Malcolm (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
- 1850 (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: 2792
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1976
Thread count
K/4 Y4 K4 G24 K24 DB24 R4 DB4 R4 DB24 K24 G24 K4 LB/4
One full sett is 344 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| 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/s14/k1y1k1g6k6db6r1db1r1db6k6g6k1lb1~x4/