Chisholm

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 BRGRBWBRBWBRGR.

Sourced from logan-1831. It is a 14 stripe tartan.

Original link /posts/logans-scottish-gael/

Provenance

Chisholm: Logan's printed table listing, scanned
Logan, The Scottish Gaël (1831), vol. II p. 402 — page-scan crop (1181,1537)–(1436,2127)

James Logan recorded the Chisholm sett in 1831, on page 402 of the Table of Clan Tartans in The Scottish Gaël — the earliest systematic published collection of clan setts. Logan gives the stripe widths in eighths of an inch, measured across the cloth and reflected about each end (a half-sett):

2½ red · 8 green · 2½ red · 2 blue · 1 white · 2 blue · 11 red · 2 blue · 1 white · 2 blue · 2½ red · 8 green · 2½ red · 1 blue

Rendered at 8 threads to the eighth-inch that is R/20 G64 R20 B16 W8 B16 R88 B16 W8 B16 R20 G64 R20 B/8 — the eighths are the captured data, and the threadcount is derived from them at that stated factor. How many threads an eighth of cloth held depends on the weave's density, so the factor is a display calibration, not Logan's count; the sett's identity lives in the proportions, which the eighths record directly. Logan named his colours rather than dyeing to a standard, so the palette here is the Dictionary's modern reading of his names.

See Logan's Scottish Gaël for the full table and method.

Later records of the Chisholm name adjusted Logan's counts: Chisholm; Chisholm #2; Chisholm Hunting; Chisholm Hunting #2. Compare their thread counts with Logan's above.

Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
source
Logan, The Scottish Gaël (1831)
data captured from
https://archive.org/details/scotishgalorcel02logagoog
data date
1831 (this record)
licence
Public domain

Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence

  1. James Logan, The Scottish Gaël (first edition) 1831 · Public domain
    the printed Table of Clan Tartans, vol. II pp. 401-408, plus the Duke of Sussex plate
  2. Internet Archive scan
    the digitised first edition the transcription was made from, cross-checked against the OCR
  3. Tartan Dictionary transcription — Logan's Scottish Gaël 2026-06 · CC BY-SA 4.0
    by-eye transcription of the Table of Clan Tartans and the Duke of Sussex plate — depths in eighths of an inch, rendered at 8 threads per eighth (a display calibration anchored by the Register's Abercrombie ×8 stripe-for-stripe match); method and match report in the linked post
  4. this dictionary
    each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources

Thread count

R/20 G64 R20 DB16 W8 DB16 R88 DB16 W8 DB16 R20 G64 R20 DB/8

One full sett is 740 threads.

Sett

Palette

ColourShadeOKLCh
DB#082077 #082077oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1)
G#008B2A #008B2Aoklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9)
W#F7F7F7 #F7F7F7oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9)
R#D60020 #D60020oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5)

Sample pattern

R/20 G64 R20 DB16 W8 DB16 R88 DB16 W8 DB16 R20 G64 R20 DB/8 tartan

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.

MacKillop (Clan)MacIntyre (of Gatehouse)Glen Orchy #1BaronageGlenaladaleMatheson NMacKillop Clan TartanFrasers Highlanders (Military?)Reid of Straloch (Personal)Convention of the Baronage (Corp)groundcomplexity

ID: /variants/s14/r5g16r5db4w2db4r22db4w2db4r5g16r5db2~x4/

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