Black Watch (Band Plaid)
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 BRBRBRGRGRBRB.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=278
3 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1819 — Black Watch (Band Plaid) (register-of-tartans, record)
Woven by William Wilson and Sons, Bannockburn, who note, under the 42nd Regiment entry in their 1819 Key Pattern Book, that to form the Plaid for the Band replace the R (red) for K (black) in the sergeants' plaids. Scottish Tartans Society notes: The 'Black Watch' has provided the base for many of the Clan tartans. Wilson had a monopoly to supply tartans for the regiments during the period when tartan was proscribed for (male) highlanders not possessing land. It was Wilson's habit to add stripes of various colours to differentiate the regiments he supplied, which, it could be argued, was the birth of the named clan tartan. - 1819 — Black Watch (Band Plaid) (tartans-authority, record)
Never called 'Black Watch' so suggest that this is Deleted in favour of the 42nd entry. PEM May 07 Wilsons' note under the 42nd Regt Tartan entry in their 1819 KPB says that to form the Plaid for the Band replace the R for K in the sergeants' plaids- PEMcD Jan 05. There is a myth that this is MacGregor of Glengyle because circa 1850, the Band Director was a MacGregor of Glengyle and the myth states that 'he gave his tartan to the band'. Actually, Wilsons merely took Black Watch and changed the black to red as mentioned above. STS Notes: The 'Black Watch' has provided the base for many of the Clan tartans. Wilson had a monopoly to supply tartans for the regiments during the period when tartan was proscribed for (male) highlanders not possessing land... It was Wilson's habit to add stripes of various colours to differentiate the regiments he supplied, which, it could be argued, was the birth of the named clan tartan. - undated — Black Watch, Plaid for Band (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
- 1819 (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: 278
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 396
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 396
Thread count
DB/32 R8 DB8 R8 DB8 R58 G54 R8 G54 R58 DB52 R8 DB/8
One full sett is 688 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) |
| 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/db16r4db4r4db4r29g27r4g27r29db26r4db4~x2/