Keirnan Irish Family 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 WGKRKRKRGW.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 10 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=1800
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1880 This pattern was recorded by Bill Johnston, Shippak, USA in 1978 along with other patterns extracted from the 'Clan Originaux' at Pendleton Mill. This and other Irish patterns appear to have originated in the former Waterford Mill in Ireland before they arrived at Pendleton in the late 19C
4 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1880 — Keirnan Irish Family Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- 01/01/1978 — Kiernan (register-of-tartans, record)
For many years the claim that this was from Clans Originaux (published in Paris in 1880) was accepted without question. In 2003 however, 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. Woven sample in Scotspun folder in Jack Dalgety collection. - pre 1978 — Kiernan (Clan)) (tartans-authority, record)
For many years the claim that this was from Clans Originaux (published in Paris in 1880) was accepted without question. In 2003 however, 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. Woven sample in Scotspun folder in Jack Dalgety collection. - undated — Keirnan (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
- 1880 (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: 1958
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1800
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1800
Thread count
W/4 G8 K12 R4 K4 R4 K6 R4 G40 W/2
One full sett is 170 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| 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/s10/w2g4k6r2k2r2k3r2g20w1~x2/