Napier
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 KWKWKWKWKBW.
Part of the Napier tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 11 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3093
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1880 — Napier (register-of-tartans, record)
For information on Clan Napier, please visit their website at www.clannapier.org. A woven sample of the tartan is included in Clans Originaux (1880) and it was also noted the W & AK Johnston's 'Tartans of the Clans & Septs of Scotland' (1906), but there is also said to be a slightly different version in the Highland Society Collection. - 1880 — Napier (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
The Napiers are said to descend from the Lennox family and it's claimed that the name originated with a comment from King Alexander III (1241 - 1286) after a battle in which the great bravery of a young Lennox turned defeat into victory: "You have all done valiantly, but there is one amongst you who has nae peer." (no equal). And he commanded young Donald Lennox to change his name forthwith. There is a woven sample in the 1880 Clans Originaux and it was also documented in the 1906 W & A K Johnston's 'Tartans of the Clans & Septs of Scotland" but there is also said to be a slightly different version in the Highland Society Collection. The Napiers are usually regarded as a Sept of the MacFarlanes but the tartan shows similarities with the MacDonald. In this graphic, the blue has been lightened to show sett. Sample in STA Johnston Collection. D C Stewart's Nomindex says "NO Napier tartan recognised by Lord Napier." and goes on to quote a letter from The Rt.Hon Lord Napier & Ettrick, 24th September 1984 "My family do not wear the kilt and do not really have a tartan although I suppose the MacFarlane and Lennox go together." A slightly confusing situation!
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
- 1880 (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: 3093
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1242
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1242
Thread count
K/16 W8 K8 W8 K8 W16 K8 W8 K16 DB48 W/4
One full sett is 276 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
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/s11/k4w2k2w2k2w4k2w2k4db12w1~x4/