Dark Island
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 BKBKBKBKBKBKBKBK.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 16 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=889
Provenance
Earliest known date: May 2003 A Solid Sett* tartan and an innovative departure from conventional tartan design. An ecru (white) yarn has been woven on a Jacquard loom with the sett being formed by stitches other than 2/2 twill and then the finished fabric has been piece-dyed black. The sett is highlighted because of the differing light reflecting qualities of the stitches. Here they are shown in grey so as to be discernible. *This new category of tartan has been given the description of Solid Sett - a solid colour but with a sett still showing.
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/05/2003 — Dark Island (register-of-tartans, record)
A Solid Sett* tartan and an innovative departure from conventional tartan design. An ecru (white) yarn has been woven on a Jacquard loom with the sett being formed by stitches other than 2/2 twill and then the finished fabric has been piece-dyed black. The sett is highlighted because of the differing light reflecting qualities of the stitches. Here they are shown in grey so as to be discernible. *This new category of tartan has been given the description of Solid Sett - a solid colour but with a sett still showing. - May 2003 — Dark Island Black Weavers Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
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
- 01/05/2003 (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: 889
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 5832
Thread count
K/8 DT4 K86 DT40 K8 DT4 K4 DT8 K4 DT4 K8 DT40 K86 DT4 K8 DT/4
One full sett is 628 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| DT | #023535 #023535 | oklch(29.8% 0.050 194.8) |
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/s16/k4dt2k43dt20k4dt2k2dt4k2dt2k4dt20k43dt2k4dt2~x2/