Quality Sporrans for less money

[OC Richard]

Is the rear pocket style typically an indicator of being older, or more maker dependent?

I'm not sure when they switched from having sporrans opening at the top (like 18th century sporrans) to having a closed top with a pocket on the back.

For sure all the old sporrans I've seen, the long-hair Victorian civilian and military sporrans, have a closed top and pocket on the back. Sometimes they left off the pocket so there's not even a pretense of practical use.

Civilian Evening Dress sporrans, the smaller rounded seal ones, that I've seen from the 1920s through the 1940s are made like that too.

These were transformed by a patent applied for in 1953 by William Elder Scott, an Edinburgh sporran maker (who had established his firm in 1937).

Prior to this the cantles on long hair Evening sporrans and the smaller seal Evening sporrans had had a back-plate, generally with two small rings to attach the chain strap to.

The Scott patent got rid of the back-plate, the cantle now just having a front and side. He made the whole top of the sporran open, fastened when shut by a small leather strap or tab, and a stud or press-button. Fairly soon all Evening sporrans were being made like this, patent or no.

Here's a pre-1953 Evening Dress sporran. As you see the pocket is about as big as possible, yet it's far from being a practical sporran.



Here's the evolution of the 20th century Evening Dress sporran backs.

Left is the old-school way, unchanged since at least the mid-19th century.

Centre is the Forsyth solution, making as much of the back open up as possible given the restrictions of the old-style cantle.

Right is the WE Scott 1953 Patent design which involved simplifying the cantle by getting rid of the back-plate. Originally these were scored across the back to form sort of a hinge. This was later dropped, as was the Patent stamp itself.



Though we should be aware that starting, what, perhaps as early as the 1880s there was a bit of a fad for "revival" sporrans, re-imaginings of mid-18th century sporrans, a fad that peaked around 1890 to 1910, which had the hinged opening purse-like cantle and fully accessible body. The King owns one of these. His is on the plain side, while many of these were incredibly ornate, with tons of knobs and tassels and bells and Celtic knotwork tooling, dark brown leather dripping with silver ornaments. Sir Harry Lauder and piper John Burgess owned examples of these.



Here's the King's "revival" sporran, when new, and recently.