Mary, Queen of Scots
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 RWBGWGGWW.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 9 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2846
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1800 — Mary, Queen of Scots (register-of-tartans, record)
From the Dalgety archives: Margaret MacDougal (Inverness Museum) noted: 'This sett is taken from a piece of very old hard-spun tartan which was used to cover the seat of a 16th century chair known as Mary, Queen of Scots chair, said to have come from Holyrood House. Now in the possession of Messrs Parker Knoll of Bucks. Sept 2005. Scottish Tartans Authority contacted Parker Knoll's family member who explained that the Mary Q of S reference was a bit of kite flying by his grandfather Tom Parker (circa 1878 -1964) who bought the chair in the 1920s, took the seat cover off to smarten it up and found an old piece of tartan covering underneath. He apparently said ' Wouldn't it be fun if we could prove that this belonged to Mary Queen of Scots?' and thus the story was born! Parker Knoll collection sold in 1997 at Sothebys and the family managed to buy back about 170 chairs (50% of the collection) but not this particular one. A piece of the tartan was cut off circa 1950s and sent to a 'society' in Scotland which presumably is where this threadcount came from. The count is said to be slightly suspect and an additional note says that the azure is indistinct and may be a faded light green. Sett size about 8 inches. Note similarity to #1674 (original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) ~ Holyrood Chair. - 1800s — Mary, Queen of Scots (Artefact) (tartans-authority, record)
From the Dalgety archives: Margaret MacDougal (Inverness Museum) noted: "This sett is taken from a piece of very old hard-spun tartan which was used to cover the seat of a 16th century chair known as Mary, Queen of Scots chair, said to have come from Holyrood House. Now in the possession of Messrs Parker Knoll of Bucks. Sept 2005. BW contacted Parker Knoll family member who explained that the Mary Q of S reference was a bit of kite flying by his grandfather Tom Parker (circa 1878 -1964) who bought the chair in the 1920s, took the seat cover off to smarten it up and found an old piece of tartan covering underneath. He apparently said " Wouldn't it be fun if we could prove that this belonged to Mary Queen of Scots?" and thus the story was born! Parker Knoll collection sold in 1997 at Sothebys and the family managed to buy back about 170 chairs (50% of the collection) but not this particular one. A piece of the tartan was cut off circa 1950s and sent to a 'society' in Scotland which presumably is where this threadcount came from. The count is said to be slightly suspect and an additional note says that the azure is indistinct and may be a faded light green. Sett size about 8 inches. Note similarity to #1674 ~ Holyrood Chair
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
- 1800 (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: 2846
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 5969
Thread count
R/10 W2 DB20 G20 W2 Y2 G4 LB4 W/2
One full sett is 120 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| 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.
ΔTartan
Threads
Variant
Sett
—
120
188
316
316
350
230
146
94
288
280
216
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/r5w1db10g10w1y1g2lb2w1~x2/