Morrison
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 GRKRKRGWG.
Part of the Morrison tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 9 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3019
3 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1747 — Morrison (register-of-tartans, record)
There are two 'stories' surrounding the Morrison clan tartans 1. The official Morrison clan tartan was recorded by Lord Lyon on 3rd January 1968, from a piece of tartan found in an old Morrison family bible. The bible contained a hand written reference to the tartan and was dated 1747, one year after the proscription of Highland dress. The discovery was made during the demolition of a Black House on Lewis in 1935. Lord Lyon was convinced that it represented the most authentic pattern of what the Morrisons wore in those days and he based the new tartan on the relic. The sample in the Scottish Tartans Authority Dalgety Collection was woven by Lochcarron and is labelled (16th March 1972) 'Enclosed pattern of the NEW Clan Morrison tartan woven from the sett provided by the Clan Secretary about the end of 1968 and made for the Morrison Clan. The Green one is now officially known as the Society Morrison.' There is no 'green Morrison' as such unless that refers to the Morrison Hunting (#1083, original Scottish Tartans Authority reference). 2. #993 (original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) is the original Morrison clan tartan but the reason that #998 (original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) is now regarded as such is said to be as follows: Colonel Morrison, wishing to re-establish his tartan - his old pre-1939 kilt had been destroyed in a London air-raid - made an error by centring ONE green line instead of TWO on the red band. When this was later brought to the attention of Sir Thomas of Learney (Lord Lyon) by Stuart Davidson in 1967 he refused to alter what had been registered in Lyon Court Books and remarked that the Morrisons would just have to accept it. - 1747 — Morrison (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
There are two 'stories' surrounding the Morrison clan tartans 1. It was claimed that the official Morrison clan tartan was recorded by Lord Lyon on 3rd January 1968, from a piece of tartan found in an old Morrison family bible. The bible contained a hand written reference to the tartan and was dated 1747, one year after the proscription of Highland dress. The discovery was made during the demolition of a Black House on Lewis in 1935. Lord Lyon was convinced that it represented the most authentic pattern of what the Morrisons wore in those days and he based the new tartan on the relic. The sample in the STA Dalgety Collection was woven by Lochcarron and is labelled (16th March 1972) "Enclosed pattern of the NEW Clan Morrison tartan woven from the sett provided by the Clan Secretary about the end of 1968 and made for the Morrison Clan. The Green one is now officially known as the Society Morrison." There is no 'green Morrison' as such unless that refers to the Morrison Hunting (#1083). 2. #993 is the original Morrison clan tartan but the reason that #998 is now regarded as such is said to be as follows: Colonel Morrison, wishing to re-establish his tartan - his old pre-1939 kilt had been destroyed in a London air-raid - made an error by centring ONE green line instead of TWO on the red band. When this was later brought to the attention of Sir Thomas Innes of Learney (Lord Lyon) by Stuart Davidson in 1967 he refused to alter what had been registered in Lyon Court Books and remarked that the Morrisons would just have to accept it. - undated — Morrison (weddslist, 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
- 1747 (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: 3019
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 998
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 998
Thread count
G/10 W4 G16 R18 K6 R8 K6 R34 G/6
One full sett is 200 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| 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.
ΔTartan
Threads
Variant
Sett
—
200
368
184
150
186
440
77
462
154
77
184
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/s9/g5w2g8r9k3r4k3r17g3~x2/