Blackie
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 GGGWRWRW.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 8 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=285
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1880 — Blackie (register-of-tartans, record)
A requested reconstruction by Jamie Scarlett MBE in May 2007 from a black and white photograph of a tartan shawl worn by Mairi Mhor nan Orain - 'big Mary of the Songs' (1821-1898) from Skye. Mairi MacPherson started composing in her 50s, and from then until her death produced some beautiful songs in Gaelic on a wide range of subjects. She was a leading figure in the battle for crofters' rights as was Professor John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895) from Edinburgh. Mairi apparently designed this tartan for him and it was conjectured by the Dualchas (Heritage Service for Skye and Lochalsh) that this might be the tartan worn by Mairi. Admittedly an extremely long shot but, in the absence of any other name, it has been given that of Blackie. The Dualchas Heritage Service have commissioned a colour painting from the Mairi photograph portrait which is why they were eager to ascertain the colours of the tartan shawl. - 1880s? — Blackie (Artefact) (tartans-authority, record)
A requested reconstruction by Jamie Scarlet in May 2007 from a black and white photograph of a tartan shawl worn by Mairi Mhor nan Orain - 'big Mary of the Songs' (1821-1898) who was born on Skye. Mary MacPherson started composing in her 50s and from then until her death, produced some of the most beautiful songs in Gaelic on a wide range of subjects. She was a leading figure in the battle for crofters' rights as was Professor John Stuart BLACKIE (1809 - 1895) an Edinburgh man of letters and famed scholar and eccentric of his day. Mairi apparently designed a tartan for him and it was conjectured by the Dualchas - Heritage Service for Skye and Lochalsh that this might be the tartan worn by Mairi. An extremely long shot but in the absence of any other name, it has been given that of Blackie. The Dualchas Heritage Service have commissioned a colour painting from the Mairi photograph portrait which is why they were eager to ascertain the colours of the tartan shawl.
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: 285
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 7184
Thread count
G/18 Y4 G18 W10 R18 LB4 R18 LB/4
One full sett is 166 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
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/s8/g9y2g9w5r9lb2r9lb2~x2/