MacLeod Red
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 BRBRBRBRGRBRBRGRGRBRG.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 21 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2643
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1982 Designed after the tartan worn by Norman MacLeod, 22nd Chief of the clan, painted by Allan Ramsay in 1747, with the costume painted by Van Haecken (see details in entry for MacLeod portrait.) A yellow stripe was added by Ruairidh MacLeod to enhance the family resemblance to other MacLeod tartans, and to differentiate this from Murray of Tullibardine, the name now attached to the sett in the portrait. Approved by the Clan MacLeod Parliament in 1982.
4 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1980 — MacLeod Red (register-of-tartans, record)
Designed after the tartan worn by Norman MacLeod, 22nd Chief of the clan, painted by Allan Ramsay in 1747, with the costume painted by Van Haecken (see details in entry for MacLeod 'Portrait'). A yellow stripe was added by Ruairidh MacLeod to enhance the family resemblance to other MacLeod tartans, and to differentiate this from Murray of Tullibardine, the name now attached to the sett in the portrait. It was agreed at a clan Parliament in 1982 chaired by clan chief John MacLeod of MacLeod that this tartan be adopted as an official red MacLeod. - 1980 — MacLeod Red (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
Designed after the tartan worn by Norman MacLeod, 22nd Chief of the clan, painted by Allan Ramsay in 1747, with the costume painted by Van Haecken (see details in entry for MacLeod 'Portrait'.) A yellow stripe was added by Ruairidh MacLeod to enhance the family resemblance to other MacLeod tartans, and to differentiate this from Murray of Tullibardine, the name now attached to the sett in the portrait. It was agreed at a clan Parliament in 1982 chaired by clan chief John MacLeod of MacLeod that this tartan be adopted as an official red MacLeod. - 1982 — MacLeod Red Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- undated — MacLeod Red (weddslist, record)
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1980 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - 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: 2643
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 496
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 496
Thread count
DB/8 R2 DB2 R4 DB22 R4 DB2 R2 Y2 R2 DB2 R32 DB16 R8 G8 R32 G22 R16 DB8 R4 Y/4
One full sett is 392 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| 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/s21/db4r1db1r2db11r2db1r1y1r1db1r16db8r4g4r16g11r8db4r2y2~x2/