Seal skin sporran

[craigclan]

Is there a way to tell if a sporran is really seal skin or an offshore copy . I traded a kilt for a belt , hose and what he said was a seal skin sporran image.jpg

[artificer]

it's hard to tell from that particular pic, but offhand I'd say it looks a lot more like a rabbitskin than seal.
You generally see seal with a very straight grain, glassy hair.
Seal also doesn't have a 'ground' hair like you'd see on land mammals, so if you can brush the guard (top) hair aside and you see a dense greyish fur underneath it's probably not seal.

Can you get a close-to shot of the hair?

ith:

[craigclan]

Here is a pic of the hair and inside . The hair is all the same colour no grey undertones

[Theyoungkiltman]

with some of the stuff i have heard, i would nae be surprised if it was cat!

[briansbarkery]

I am no expert but I didn't think seal fur was that long. I have always thought it was about the same length as a cow, hence the reason they use cow now to look like seal since seal hunting is illegal and impossible to ship through customs.

[OC Richard]

As people have said, that looks too long.

For people who have seen, handled, and owned large numbers of sealskin sporrans they're very easy to identify in person, and usually easy to identify in a photo. Yours is curious, there.

Sealskin has a distinctive look which I'm struggling to find words to describe. The hair is short and straight and has an odd distinctive almost metallic gleam, slightly reminiscent of a wire brush (I'm thinking of the grey seal).

I have seen that yellowish-offwhite seal that's a bit longer and fluffier, especially on vintage sporrans (it was very popular back in the 1930s etc).

Thing is, there's probably a large number of different species all with different fur. It's just that in the sporran world you see that metallic grey seal over and over and you start to equate that particular fur with 'seal'.

[artificer]

As people have said, that looks too long.

For people who have seen, handled, and owned large numbers of sealskin sporrans they're very easy to identify in person, and usually easy to identify in a photo. Yours is curious, there.

Sealskin has a distinctive look which I'm struggling to find words to describe. The hair is short and straight and has an odd distinctive almost metallic gleam, slightly reminiscent of a wire brush (I'm thinking of the grey seal).

I have seen that yellowish-offwhite seal that's a bit longer and fluffier, especially on vintage sporrans (it was very popular back in the 1930s etc).

Thing is, there's probably a large number of different species all with different fur. It's just that in the sporran world you see that metallic grey seal over and over and you start to equate that particular fur with 'seal'.

The term I use is "Glassy". The individual hairs almost look life fibreglass.

I agree that it doesn't look like seal.

To the OP, this is what most seal looks like, as @OC Richard noted, some is a bit longer, or the colour is lighter or darker, but this is sort of stereotypical for seal.
hairdetail.jpg

I've been going through my sample book (I try to keep small swatches of any fur/hide I've used for future reference) and yours doesn't appear to be an aquatic mammal at all.
It doesn't look like Musquach (muskrat), Beaver, or Otter.
Looking at yours a bit more I still think it might be hair-on calf, although it looks a bit thick for that.
How soft is the hair?

ith:

[craigclan]

It's super soft . I'm thinking rabbit ?

[artificer]

It's super soft . I'm thinking rabbit ?

Yeah, if it's incredibly soft it's probably rabbit. Mink would be the other option, but then hair on mink is usually fairly straight and somewhat short at ~1-1.5cm or so.

Rabbit is quite commonly seen on sporrans.

ith:

[Mel1721L]

I have trouble trying to justify the wearing of anything leather, there is no way I could use sealskin anything.