I'm afraid I'm going to need something like that very soon. I'm back playing with a pipe band (the same one that got me started playing pipes almost exactly 50 years ago, but that is another story). The horsehair sporrans have enough room for a credit card and a short letter. So the last event was a concert rather than a parade, so that I could have another sporran right there. I swapped that sporran for what I thought was a nice, fairly roomy brass cantle sporran with a soft leather bag. It turned out the phone caught on the inside of the cantle and cracked the screen cover. Parades end up somewhere different from the start, ergo the need for a non-traditional to carry the phone, wallet and keys.
Glad to see you are back in a pipe band. Sure wish I was. Sorry you messed up your phone, I don’t have to worry about that as I don’t have a cell phone. Don’t want one, I had one when I was working, it was a pain in the bleep. Every time it rang it was another job.
There are plenty of unobtrusive phone holders that will fit on a kilt belt available on the internet. There is always a danger of dropping something when rummaging in an overfilled sporran.
About the old-school horsehair Pipe Band sporrans, yes there's precious little room. Some have no pocket at all.
What gets overlooked sometimes is that they were generally worn with traditional military-style doublets which (if made by the traditional makers like Thomas Gordon) had pockets.
In the late 1960s the army adopted those rather ugly and untraditional-looking Other Ranks horsehair sporrans (replacing the "Culloden" 1953 style) which for all their shortcomings (literally, they were 4 inches too short, and had hideous chrome cantles) were a big roomy fully-opening pouch.
Happily the big fully-opening pouch has been continued with the new RRS one-for-all full-length horsehair sporrans.
If I was in charge of a Pipe Band who wanted to do Full Dress I'd adopt those RRS horsehair sporrans not only because they're roomy but also because they're plentiful and cheap.
Last edited by OC Richard; 6th July 25 at 03:08 PM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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