Gordon Clan
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 BKBKBKGKGKGKBKBKBKGKGKGKBKBK.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 28 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=1453
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1793 — Gordon Clan (register-of-tartans, record)
The Gordon tartan is the regimental tartan of the famous Gordon Highlanders and was selected by the Alexander, the 4th Duke from a choice of three submitted by William Forsyth, a weaver and outfitter from the town of Huntly. Forsyth wrote on 15th April 1793 'When I had the honour of communing with His Grace the Duke of Gordon, he was desirous to have patterns of the 42nd Regiment plaid with a small yellow stripe properly placed. I imagine the yellow stripes will appear very lively.' A Gordon website claims that the Duke offered the other two Forsyth samples to Gordon Branch or Cadet Families. The Gordons of Hallhead and Esslemont selected the tartan with three yellow lines and the Gordon-Cumming of Altyre and Gordonstoun chose the tartan with two yellow lines. The earliest known date from a list compiled by D.C. Stewart from Wilsons of Bannockburn letters is 1798. - undated — Gordon 2 (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
- 1793 (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: 1453
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 223
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 223
Thread count
DB/46 K6 DB6 K6 DB6 K34 G44 K4 Y8 K4 G44 K34 DB44 K6 DB6 K6 DB44 K34 G44 K4 Y8 K4 G44 K34 DB6 K6 DB6 K/6
One full sett is 1036 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| T | #00879F #00879F | oklch(57.4% 0.102 216.1) |
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| DG | #053819 #053819 | oklch(30.0% 0.075 151.3) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
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/s15/db23k3db3k3db3k17g22k2y4k2g22k17db22k3db3~x2/