Nicolson (Lochcarron)
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 KRGRGRKWKRGRK.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3137
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1845 — Nicolson (Lochcarron) (register-of-tartans, record)
This is said to be the Lochcarron version of Nicolson and the count is extremely close to a version given in 'The Highlander' (unfortunately no date given). This is very close to STR #3139 which notes: The earliest documented evidence of a Nicolson or MacNicol tartan is the drawing by McIan of a woman wearing a tartan shawl (1845-7). The illustrated tartan is not consistant and various interpretations are possible. The four by four red squares can also be seen in tartans associated with the MacLeods. - 1845 — Nicolson/MacNichol (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
This is the version woven by the major weavers and the count is extremely close to that given in 'The Highlander' in 1876 - source J.G.Mackay. The earliest documented evidence of a Nicolson or MacNicol tartan is the drawing by McIan of a woman wearing a tartan shawl (1845-7). The illustrated tartan is not consistent and various interpretations are possible. The threadcount used here is taken from a sample in the Scottish Tartans Society collection which is similar but not identical to the count recorded by D.C. Stewart (1950). The four by four red squares can be seen in tartans associated with the MacLeods. See MacNicol.
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
- 1845 (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: 3137
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1148
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1148
Thread count
K/8 R32 G8 R32 G52 R4 K28 LB4 K28 R32 G8 R32 K/8
One full sett is 536 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| 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) |
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| 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/s13/k2r8g2r8g13r1k7lb1k7r8g2r8k2~x4/