Brass sporran?

**MacMillan of Rathdown** · 13th May 08, 06:15 AM

It looks like an Indo-Persian slow-match box. Slow matches were used to ignite the powder in the pan of a matchlock, which in turn caused the gun to fire. A spare length of slow-match was carried coiled in the box; powder and ball were often carried in wooden containers called cartridges which were hung from belts worn over the the shoulder. As the matchlock musket remained popular in India (as well as Japan and China) longer than it did in Europe, most of the slow-match boxes encountered tend to come from the sub-continent hence the Indo-Persian attribution.

That said, without actually examining the item, this is nothing more than a semi-educated guess.

**MacMillan of Rathdown** · 13th May 08, 08:31 AM

deleted. any body else having problems with the new format of the XMTS site?

**Dukeof Kircaldy** · 13th May 08, 09:00 AM

It is the rare Scottish postal sporran. An extremely unique and extremely valuable item.

Back in the Victorian days of the Penny black and early British Postal system, Highland postmen wore postboxes instead of sporrans. The problem was that this became much too heavy and cumbersome. Needless to say most were melted down to make pillar boxes.

Such a find is incredibly rare.

**Dirk Skene** · 13th May 08, 10:32 AM

It doesn't look practical.

**sharpdressedscot** · 14th May 08, 05:44 AM

Or comfortable.

**Rogerson785** · 14th May 08, 07:29 AM

Perhaps it is for holding tobacco or snuff? It really is too small for anything else. The lid opens towards the wearer, and with that pointed lid I doubt it would be very practical or comfortable to wear, and if one goes through that much snuff then they have a problem, pipe or cigarette tobacco makes more sense.