Dowling
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 WBKBGKWKWKYBW.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=967
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1990 — Dowling (register-of-tartans, record)
A mystery surrounds this tartan and with almost the identical sett to Bowling (Dowling has a W6 in place of Bowling's G8) it is surmised that at some stage a transcription error has ocurred with a 'D' being used instead of a 'B'. Attached to Dowling then came the apparent spurious provenance that was attached to Bowling - Clans Originaux etc. The notes claim that Dowling is also known as 'Cladagh/Clodach' in the Sindex system but no record of Cladagh/Clodagh can be found in that system - only the reference in the Clodagh entry (#1795, original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) which itself is of doubtful provenance. Dowling is clearly a variation of Stewart/Victoria. In May 2004, Phil Smith found the following notes of Bill Johnson's. 'Clodagh, Dowling, Fitzpatrick, from a tracing of swatch in Pendleton's 'Irish Tartans' 1990, Kennedy, Forde and Kiernan.' Not known if the book was dated 1990 or the tracings were made in 1990. Pendleton have no knowledge of any such book. - 1990 — Dowling (District) (tartans-authority, record)
A mystery surrounds this tartan and with almost the identical sett to Bowling (Dowling has a W6 in place of Bowling's G8) it is surmised that at some stage a transcription error has ocurred with a 'D' being used instead of a 'B'. Attached to Dowling then came the apparent spurious provenance that was attached to Bowling - Clans Originaux etc. The notes claim that Dowling is also known as "Cladagh/Clodach*" in the Sindex system but no record of Cladagh/Clodagh can be found in that system - only the reference in the Clodagh entry (#1795) which itself is of doubtful provenance. Dowling is clearly a variation of Stewart/Victoria. In May 2004, Phil Smith found the following notes of Bill Johnson's. " . . .Clodagh, Dowling, Fitzpatrick . . .from a tracing of swatch in Pendleton's 'Irish Tartans' 1990 . . .Kennedy, Forde and Kiernan." Not known if the book was dated 1990 or the tracings were made in 1990. Pendleton have no knowledge of any such book.
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
- 1990 (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: 967
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 4708
Thread count
LB/6 DB40 LY10 K16 LB6 K6 LB6 K6 G28 DO16 K6 DO8 LB/6
One full sett is 308 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| DO | #412714 #412714 | oklch(30.1% 0.050 55.7) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| LY | #DCBC32 #DCBC32 | oklch(80.0% 0.150 95.2) |
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
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/s13/lb3db20ly5k8lb3k3lb3k3g14do8k3do4lb3~x2/