MacDonald Dress
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 BRBRBRBRBRKGRGRGRGRGKWBWKRKWBWKR.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 32 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2343
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1880 — MacDonald Dress (register-of-tartans, record)
From the 1880 Clans Originaux. This appears to be the version used by modern weavers. The original Johnstons sett used black for the two wide tramlines on white instead of blue as shown here which is the choice of today's weavers. Sample in Scottish Tartans Authority's Dalgety Collection. D.C. Dalgliesh has this in the Dancers' Book but the black on the white shown here has been changed to blue. - 1880 — MacDonald Dress - 1880 (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
From the 1880 Clans Originaux. Asymmetric. This appears to be the version used by modern weavers. The original Johnstons sett used black for the two wide tramlines on white instead of blue as shown here which is the choice of today's weavers. Sample in STA Dalgety Collection. D C Dalgliesh has this in the Dancers' Book but the black on the white shown here has been changed to blue.
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
- 1880 (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: 2343
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1997
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1997
Thread count
DB/24 R6 DB4 R2 DB16 R2 DB4 R6 DB24 R2 K24 G24 R6 G4 R2 G16 R2 G4 R6 G24 K24 W4 DB8 W32 K2 R8 K2 W32 DB8 W4 K24 R/2
One full sett is 678 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) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
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/s32/db12r3db2r1db8r1db2r3db12r1k12g12r3g2r1g8r1g2r3g12k12w2db4w16k1r4k1w16db4w2k12r1~x2/