Stewart Old.. Clan 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 BKGKGKBRKRKRGKBKG.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 17 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=319
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1819 A sample of this sett is included in the Royal Tartans collection at the Scottish Tartans Society under the title Stewart of Bute', but it often regarded as the Clan' tartan as distinct from the `Royal'. Captain Stuart Davidson, founder chairman of the Scottish Tartans Society, suggested that "it belongs to the Stewarts of the Western Isles".
5 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1819 — Stewart Old.. Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- pre 1893 — Stewart of Appin (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
Asymmetric The Stewart Society website says that this was made for Stewart of Achnacone by Haggarts of Aberfeldy and as a result was at one time called Stewart of Achnacone but was officially adopted as Stewart of Appin by the Chief in 19?? This is the count from D C Stewart's 'Setts' publication of 1950. Of this tartan he says: "This is quite unlike any other tartan; it is subdued in colour, but rich in effect. It belongs rather to the Stewarts of the Western Highlands, but was early accepted as the Clan Stewart tartan. In his publication of 1893, D W Stewart (D.C.'s father) said: 'The use of this design as Stewart tartan for a period extending back to 1745 at least, is vouched by the records of manufacturers and collectors alike.' He then went on to relate that he had been shown - by Mrs Stuart of Dalness - a remarkable example of the old belted plaid, 'of a design differing from the above in certain particulars but having the same dominant features. It is reported to be two centuries old, and to represent the original sett of the tartan.' W & A K Johnston in their 1906 work said 'This tartan has been known for more than a hundred years as the 'Stewart' tartan, and is supposed to have been worn in former times by such families as the Stewarts of Grandtully etc.' - undated — Stewart Old (weddslist, record)
- undated — Stewart Old / Ancient (weddslist, record)
- undated — Stewart Old (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
- 1819 (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 Tartans Authority (ITI): 160
Thread count
DB/24 K2 G4 K2 G4 K2 DB24 R4 K24 R2 K24 R4 G24 K2 DB4 K2 G/24
One full sett is 304 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) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| 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/s17/db12k1g2k1g2k1db12r2k12r1k12r2g12k1db2k1g12~x2/