Black 1990 (Name)
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 KBKWKY.
Part of the Black tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 6 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=7630
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- pre 1945 — Black 1990 (Name) (tartans-authority, record)
Asymmetric. In 1990, taken to a TECA stand at one of the US Highland Games by a Timothy Wood, who explained that his father had 'found' it in a shop in northern England during World War II. 'Tartans' by Johnston & Smith which shows the correct asymmetric threadcount as seen here. 3693 is an incorrect symmetrical version woven in 2003 by D C Dalgliesh of Selkirk. - 01/01/1990 — Black (asymmetric) (register-of-tartans, record)
In 1990, taken to a Tartan Education and Cultural Association stand at one of the US Highland Games by a Timothy Wood, who explained that his father had 'found' it in a shop in northern England during World War II. Appears in 'Tartans' by Johnston & Smith, which shows the correct asymmetric threadcount as seen here. Scottish Tartan Register #269 is an incorrect symmetrical version woven in 2003 by DC Dalgliesh Ltd of Selkirk.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- pre 1945 (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
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - 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: 5648
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 7630
Thread count
K/34 DR12 K4 W12 K34 LY/4
One full sett is 162 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DR | #55120C #55120C | oklch(30.0% 0.099 29.3) |
| LY | #DCBC32 #DCBC32 | oklch(80.0% 0.150 95.2) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
Sample pattern
Compared to the master
This cloth is one sett of its design; the master sett (the exemplar the design is anchored on) is below for comparison.
Its ΔTartan distance from the master is 0.30 — the same measure the nearest-tartans table ranks by (0 is identical; a re-scale of the same cloth is near 0, a recolour or a different proportion further).
this sett
master sett ★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/k17dr6k2w6k17ly2~x2/