Canadian Military Sporrans

[Toraba]

Hello everyone.
I've browsed this forum over the years but never really took the time to read many of the posts or contribute, which is strange as I've been avid participant and support of Scottish culture most of my life, proudly wearing my kilt whenever an opportunity to do so has arisen, as is so often the case. As such an local and every international destination I've been to, I've been to and kilt from Dubai to the Kanchanaburi. Bridge (the real River Kwai bridge) in Thailand. I climbed Victoria Peak in Hong Kong in kilt, Aries Rock in Australia and Mt. Fuji in Japan just to mention a few. In short. I'm wear a kilt with pride. I've always done so and hope to continue to do so for many years.

I'm 42 years old. That said I'm very much a traditionalist when it comes to wearing a kilt and the attire worn. In other words, nothing to unconventional for me. I believe in wearing a kilt right and being properly presented, which means flashes at the right angles, right style of sporran for the occasion and well turned out. Thus you will never see me wearing a Pakistani-made Black Watch kilt bought of ebay for $9.99 with synthetic hair sporran, with sandals and a tank top on strolling down the street.

I find my tastes gradually rolling back so that I'm increasingly in favour of even old styles and designs that did not appeal to me when I was younger.

Anyway this post was not meant to be about me. This is my intro as I have not done so before. My only other post was about a year ago when I acquire two of the original kilts from the famous film "Tunes of Glory", one of which still had one of which still bore a name label of one of the leading actors in it, Gerald Harper.

One of my New Years resolutions was to start participating in this forum. I'll admit however that my reasons are not entirely philanthropic. I'm going to start participating because there are things I want to learn and the fastest way to do this is to hope to benefit from the huge wealth of combined knowledge that the members of this forum have to offer.

So let's get started. I'm a sporran collector amongst other things. I estimate I have about 150 sporrans at this time. I'm not sure of the exact number because about half are unfortunately lingering in long term storage at this time. The majority of my most prized sporrans decorate walls all around my house.

While initially any sporran that appealed to me got to join the team, in recent years I've focused more on regimental sporrans, the majority of which I now have, or at least those of the famous old school British Regiments; The Black Watch, Camerons, Gordons et cetera.

I believe I have most of the officer grade sporrans of the aforementioned regiments and others, including those worn by subalterns, senior field grade officers and their alternative levee variations.

Recently I've gone into Canadian Military sporrans and found it hard to document what style of sporran the various Regiments across Canada have worn, are wearing and they differences that may exist between OR, NCO, band (pipers), and the officer ranks. So I would like to build an online archive hear with everyone's help.

I of course will contribute images from my collection.

I almost never partake in forums, so I'm not sure what the best way to go about this might be. So I will start with a few images of some of my collection and then we can start to fine tune this into a archive about Canadian Military sporrans, or so I hope.

Cheers,
Trevor

(Victoria, B.C.)

[Chas]

Hello Trevor,

Welcome again to XMarks from the other side of the world in Norfolk, England.

Is there any way you can label the individual sporrans, so we know what we are looking at when we click on a thumbnail?

Regards

Chas

[Toraba]

Hi,
Thank you for your reply and nice to meet you.
Yes, I'll do that. I just wanted to throw up a few basic shots to give some idea of what I have to share. I'll post some more later today. I'll have to see how i can get bigger and clearer images posted. For now this is an interesting sporran to start with. Though British, from the Royal Scots Regiment, my former Regiments sister regiment. I was always skeptical about this sporran. The cantle seems to overpower it. Recently however I found two images of this style of sporran, one of which is on this forum which shows a Royal Scot piper around 1939 with a CScotR soldier. The piper is wearing the same sporran. Even the embossed gilt thistle bells look to be correct, though they look out of place. Anyone else have an example of this sporran? Or images? I know there is one for sale on ebay, cantle only that is. I have a spare cantle for that matter, as I always thought they were unusual.

[Muddy]

I am drooling here........NICE collection. I have been jonesing for a horsehair sporran for some time now.
Thanks for sharing the pics.

[Toraba]

[Toraba]

Obviously I don't know what I'm doing here.

[Toraba]

Should I move this to another part of the forum. Not a lot of interest it seems? No offence to those who have looked. I've just notice other areas that seem to have a lot more traffic.


Below are two images that show the above Royal Scot pipers sporran. I've never seen any other images or examples of this sporran. Other pictures would be welcome.





We can start discussing these ones too.

[Toraba]

[Toraba]

[SteveB]

Toraba,


Hello and a warm Celtic from Boston, Massachusetts.

You may wish to start a thread on sporrans in the "Show us Your Pics" forum. This is where they will stay available for a long time, as this forum has a shorter time limit on threads.

Slainte,


SteveB