Malcolm

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 BKGKBRBRBKGKGK.

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

Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 14 stripe tartan.

Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2791

2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
  • 01/01/1850 — Malcolm (register-of-tartans, record)
    This is the correct version of the asymmetrical Malcolm as shown by the woven sample in W and A Smith's 1850 publication 'The Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland'. Their provenance was 'We addressed Sir John Malcolm of Balbeadie on the subject of his Tartan, and enclosed a specimen, which the worthy Baronet acknowledges to be correct.' D.C. Stewart notes in his Nomindex 'Remarkable similarity to the Double Davidson.' - #444 (original Scottish Tartans Authority reference).
  • 1850 — Malcolm (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
    Asymmetric. This is the correct version of the asymmetrical Malcolm as shown by the woven sample in William & Andrew Smith's 1850 publication "The Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland." Their provenance was "We addressed Sir John Malcolm of Balbeadie on the subject of his Tartan, and enclosed a specimen, which the worthy Baronet acknowledges to be correct." D.C. Stewart notes in his Nomindex "Remarkable similarity to the Double Davidson." - #444
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
1850 (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

K/4 Y4 K4 G24 K24 DB24 R4 DB4 R4 DB24 K24 G24 K4 T/4

One full sett is 344 threads.

Sett

Palette

ColourShadeOKLCh
T#00879F #00879Foklch(57.4% 0.102 216.1)
DB#082077 #082077oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1)
G#008B2A #008B2Aoklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9)
K#000000 #000000oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0)
R#D60020 #D60020oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5)
Y#8B6E00 #8B6E00oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4)

Sample pattern

K/4 Y4 K4 G24 K24 DB24 R4 DB4 R4 DB24 K24 G24 K4 T/4 tartan

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 0.01 — 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 (top) woven against the master sett (bottom) this sett master sett ★
One weave of this sett against the master sett ★, split on the diagonal: a shared proportion runs seamlessly across it with only the shades shifting; a different proportion breaks on it.

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.

Malcolm Clan TartanMalcolm (a)MalcolmCunningham HuntingElgin - LandshutElgin-LandshutLee Cox (Personal)Scottish National District TartanMacKenzie MorganKinloch Anderson Huntinggroundcomplexity

ID: /variants/s14/k1y1k1g6k6db6r1db1r1db6k6g6k1t1~x4/

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