MacAlister 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 RGGRWRWRWRGRWRWRGRWRWRGRWRWRBRWRGGRGGRWRBRWR.
Part of the MacAlister tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 44 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=1465
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1850 This plate is taken from the manuscript of William and Andrew Smith's 'Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland'. The Smith's sources included the findings of George Hunter, an Army clothier, who toured the Highlands in search of old tartans prior to 1822. MacAlisters are descendants of Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles. Contemporary accounts of Flora MacDonald (1746) suggest that MacAlisters wore the MacDonald tartan at that time. The MacAlister tartan certified by the chief in 1816 shows the MacDonald connection in its design. The present day Chief MacAlister of Loup was granted by Lord Lyon in 1991.
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
- 1850 (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
Thread count
R/16 G2 DG4 R4 LB2 R2 W2 R2 LB2 R4 DG6 R2 W2 R12 LB2 R2 DG24 R2 LB2 R32 LB2 R2 DG24 R2 LB2 R12 W2 R2 DB8 R2 W2 R4 DG6 G2 R4 G2 DG6 R6 W2 R2 DB4 R2 W2 R/16
One full sett is 456 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) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| 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/s44/r8g1dg2r2lb1r1w1r1lb1r2dg3r1w1r6lb1r1dg12r1lb1r16lb1r1dg12r1lb1r6w1r1db4r1w1r2dg3g1r2g1dg3r3w1r1db2r1w1r8~x2/