Maine, Original State of (Fashion)
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 GBWBWBWBGRW.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 11 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=502
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1964 — Maine, Original State of (Fashion) (tartans-authority, record)
A confusing situation. The Maine tartan is the oldest of American 'state' tartans. Designed 1964 by Sol Gilis of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and originally woven by the Maine Spinning Company which has now gone out of business. When the tartan was first introduced it was reported in the Glasgow Herald (30.12.65) that it had been 'duly accredited by the State of Maine'. The State archives, however, are unable to locate the authorization. The tartan dropped out of sight and was then re-discovered in 1987 and then woven in Maine in 1988 by Jane Holmes of Plymouth, ME and items made from the fabric are made and sold by her company, the Maine Tartan and Tweed Co. The Maine State Tartan was copyrighted in 1988 by the MTTCo. It was reported that the later variation of this tartan (Maine Dirigo #3068) from the St. Andrew's Society of Maine had been adopted as the official State of Maine Tartan in January 2001 but subsequent information indicated that it had not been considered until Feb. 13th of that year and the recommendation had been that 'it ought not to pass' . . . . and it didn't. There is thus NO OFFICIAL STATE OF MAINE TARTAN although this version here (502) probably has the best claim to the title of the Official Unofficial Maine Tartan. August 2013: Maine Tartan and Tweed Co. were selling this as the Maine State Tartan but now state that they are discontinuing it - probably in favour of thier own 'Maine Arcadia tartan as registered at 10292. - 01/01/1965 — Maine, Original State of (register-of-tartans, record)
A confusing situation. The Maine tartan is the oldest of American 'state' tartans. Designed 1964 by Sol Gilis of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and originally woven by the Maine Spinning Company which has now gone out of business. When the tartan was first introduced it was reported in the Glasgow Herald (30.12.65) that it had been 'duly accredited by the State of Maine'. The State archives, however, are unable to locate the authorization. The tartan dropped out of sight and was then re-discovered in 1987 and then woven in Maine in 1988 by Jane Holmes of Plymouth, ME and items made from the fabric are made and sold by her company, the Maine Tartan and Tweed Co. The Maine State Tartan was copyrighted in 1988 by the MTTCo. Items made out of the Maine Tartan are also available from the Maine State Museum Gift Shop in Augusta, My Maine Bag in Bangor, and Just Me in Portland. Since this #502 is not the official Maine tartan (that is #3068, original Scottish Tartans Authority references), the foregoing information (taken from the Internet in June 2006) is confusing. The later variation of this (Maine Dirigo #3068, original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) has been adopted as the official State of Maine Tartan in January 2001.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- 1964 (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
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - 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: 2788
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 502
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 502
Thread count
DG/4 DB4 LB46 DB4 LB4 DB12 LB4 DB4 DG66 R4 LB/4
One full sett is 304 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) |
| DG | #053819 #053819 | oklch(30.0% 0.075 151.3) |
| 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.
ΔTartan
Threads
Variant
Sett
—
304
304
296
172
242
236
152
152
172
242
488
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/s11/dg2db2lb23db2lb2db6lb2db2dg33r2lb2~x2/