American Bi-Centennial
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 BWWWBKRWRWRWR.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=67
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1975 From an idea put forward by Mr J.C.Thomson in 1974, to have an identifying tartan for American St Andrews and Caledonian Societies'. Where the lighter stripes cross each other in the dark blue, there is an effect of the Stars of the American flag. The thirteen alternate red and white stripes appear in the full sett of the tartan.
4 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1975 — American Bi-Centennial (register-of-tartans, record)
Designed in response to an idea put forward by Mr JC Thomson in 1974, that there should be an identifying tartan for American St Andrews and Caledonian societies. Where the lighter stripes cross each other in the dark blue, there is an effect of the stars of the American flag. The thirteen alternate red and white stripes appear in the full sett of the tartan. This tartan started life as the American Bi-Centennial but was then modified and the name changed to American St Andrews Societies. - 1975 — American St Andrews Societies (Corp. (tartans-authority, record)
This tartan started life as the American Bi-Centennial which was possibly designed vy Scotty Thompson but was then modified and the name changed to American St Andrews Societies. Jamie Scarlett, Bill Johnston and Phil Smith all had some input to this design, Jamie's being to 'offset' the white threads crossing to look like the stars in the American flag. - 1975 — American Bicentennial Commemorative Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- undated — 31, Bicentennial (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
- 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: 67
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 91
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 91
Thread count
DB/28 LB4 W4 LB4 DB40 K40 R34 W8 R6 W6 R6 W6 R/10
One full sett is 354 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) |
| 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/s13/db14lb2w2lb2db20k20r17w4r3w3r3w3r5~x2/