American
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 BRBWBWBWR.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 9 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=66
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1975 — American (register-of-tartans, record)
John C (Jack) Cumming was born in Forfar, Angus and moved to the USA as an infant. The design is based on the colours of the American flag. This tartan was originally woven by Barbara Schaffer of Arizona and presented to US First Lady Betty Ford in 1976. Copyright (USA) 1975 ref. GP1211829. - 13th Aug. 1975 — American (Fashion)) (tartans-authority, record)
John C. (Jack) Cumming originally of Forfar, Angus (went to the US as an infant in 1929) and served in the US Army during WWII. He based his design on the colours in the American flag. Presented to US First Lady Betty Ford in 1976. Following info from Matt Newsome 20 Aug 2004 - Originally woven by Barbara Schaffer of Arizona who has a file of information on it including original layout of colours, samples of the finished cloth and a 'thank you' letter from Betty Ford. These artefacts probably being donated to the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin. Matt Newsome of the Tartans Museum in Franklin NC did find a letter on file that John Cumming wrote to Dr. Teall in 1987 giving him permission to use the tartan in the District Tartan book. In the letter, Mr. Cumming cited the copyright number of the tartan (from 1975), as GP 121829. A letter from Betty Ford does not satisfy the need to have documented proof that this was accepted by the relevant authority as being the American tartan. Category therefore changed to 'Fashion' 23 May 2013 - EBW.
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
- 1975 (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: 66
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 464
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 464
Thread count
R/8 W8 B8 W8 B28 W16 B4 R84 B/8
One full sett is 328 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| B | #466CC8 #466CC8 | oklch(55.1% 0.149 265.0) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
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/s9/r2w2b2w2b7w4b1r21b2~x4/