Russell 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 KGKRBW.
Part of the Mitchell tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from house-of-tartan. It is a 6 stripe tartan.
Original link http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/house/TartanViewjs.asp?colr=Def&tnam=1094
Provenance
Earliest known date: c.1815 It seems certain that the tartan was first known as Galbraith. William Wilson and Sons of Bannockburn recorded the pattern as Russell in their pattern book of 1847, although it was named Hunter in the earlier book of 1819.
6 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- c.1815 — Russell Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- c.1815 — Hunter Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- 1815 — Galbraith Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- undated — Russell or Mitchell or Hunter or Galbraith (register-of-tartans, record)
It seems certain that the tartan was first known as Galbraith in the collection of the Highland Society of London. William Wilson and Sons of Bannockburn recorded the pattern as Russell in their pattern book of 1847, although it was named Hunter in the earlier book of 1819. John Telfer Dunbar states that he has a record of a Hunter tartan designed by a gentleman of the name Hunter in 1824 but without a thread count. Galbraiths (Briton's son in Gaelic) are connected with the Earls of Lennox, and at one time took protection as a Sept of Clan Donald. The name Galbraith is associated with the West Coast island of Gigha. Named in honour of General Billy Mitchell when it was adopted as the tartan of the United States Air Force pipe band. Wilsons of Bannockburn a weaving firm founded c1770 near Stirling. The Pattern books are in the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh. Copys of the Pattern books and letters in the Scottish Tartans Society archive. - undated — Russell, or Mitchell or Hunter or Galbraith (weddslist, record)
- undated — Mitchell (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
- c.1815 (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 Register of Tartans: 3618
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1094
Thread count
K/4 G24 K24 R2 DB24 W/4
One full sett is 156 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) |
| 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/s6/k2g12k12r1db12w2~x2/