Nicolson (McIan)

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 GRKRGRWRKRGR.

Part of the MacNicol tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.

Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 12 stripe tartan.

Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3136

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
1845 (this record)
licence
Crown copyright

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

  1. Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
    the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland
  2. 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
  3. 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.

Thread count

R/36 G6 R36 K24 R6 LB6 R6 G48 R36 K6 R36 G/6

One full sett is 462 threads.

Sett

Palette

ColourShadeOKLCh
LB#B5BBDE #B5BBDEoklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6)
DG#053819 #053819oklch(30.0% 0.075 151.3)
G#008B2A #008B2Aoklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9)
K#000000 #000000oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0)
Y#8B6E00 #8B6E00oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4)
R#D60020 #D60020oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5)

Sample pattern

R/36 G6 R36 K24 R6 LB6 R6 G48 R36 K6 R36 G/6 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.

Nicolson, MacNicolMacNicolMacNicolMorrison Old Clan TartanMacQuarrie AncientMacDonell of KeppachMorrison LCMorrison LCMacLeod and MacNicolMorrisongroundcomplexity

ID: /variants/s12/r6g1r6k4r1lb1r1g8r6k1r6g1~x6/

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