Evolution of Traditional sporrans

[OC Richard]

Being a visual person I want to see things!

And my eye best sees comparisons, patterns, and connections if I see things side-by-side.

Growing up with Traditional Highland Dress, and accustomed to its three distinct modes

-Civilian Day Dress
-Civilian Evening Dress
-Military Uniform

one of the first things that struck when I got the book The Highlanders of Scotland was that the type of sporran now called a "piper's sporran", only seen nowadays in the military and with military-style civilian Pipe Band outfits, was worn in all three of those modes of dress in Victorian times. (Left column, below.)

When one looks at Victorian images the first impression is of chaos, of various bits being freely combined, and little demarcation between Day Dress and Evening Dress.

But then I started to see that there was a distinction between Day Dress and Evening Dress, perhaps more so than today, in that metalwork tended to be avoided, dispensing with kilt pins, weaponry, metal buttons, sporran-chains, metal on sporran cantles, and sometimes even cap-badges.

Though things were often mixed together, and Victorians generally worn long hair sporrans both for Day and Evening, there was a distinct Victorian proto-Day Dress sporran: brown-grey hair and with a plain leather cantle. In the Victorian proto-Evening Dress the long hair sporran was nearly always white with a silver cantle.

Victorians had another sort of Day sporran, the small rounded animal mask sort.

By Edwardian times the long hair Day sporrans were gone, replaced by brown leather sporrans (sometimes quite ornate silver-mounted Revival kind) and small fur sporrans as well as the continued popularity of animal mask sporrans.

The Victorian style Evening sporran continued to be popular. (Centre column, below.)

Shortly after World War One the long white hair Evening sporrans began to be replaced by the sort of sporrans considered Day sporrans before the war, small rounded fur with silver tops.

Brown leather Day sporrans were becoming less ornate. (Right column, below.)

Here are snapshots of popular sporrans from the 1860s (left) 1907 (centre) and the 1930s (right).

In each column Day sporrans are top, Evening sporrans bottom.

Many of the 1930s sporrans will look familiar, because several of those styles are still in regular production today.

While sporran styles underwent a near-total overhaul between 1900 and 1930 they've remained essentially unchanged since.

True that since the rise of the kilt hire industry (taking off in the 1980s) the new category of "semi dress" sporran was created by taking traditional Day sporrans, making them black, and adding hardware from Evening sporrans. Yet, most of those traditional 1930s Day and Evening styles are still being made and worn.