Quality Sporrans for less money

[OC Richard]

I've noticed a lot of sporrans that are made with pigskin, or cowhide stippled to look like pig skin. In leather bag making pigskin is most often used as a lining. On sporrans the pigskin is often laminated onto the back of a piece of cowhide for structure. Why is pigskin used so often? Is pigskin just tradition? If so, how far back does the tradition go?

I always wonder about the origins of things too. I'm forever looking through old catalogues and studying old pictures to try to find out not only the "why" but also the "when" of things.

In this case the "when" is easier to answer than the "why".

Highland Dress is one of those things that appears to follow "punctuated equilibrium". Highland fashions will be more or less stable for a half-century or more, then suddenly and for no apparent reason will undergo a major transformation.

The last such was over 100 years ago, in the period roughly from 1900 to 1920.

From around 1840 to around 1910 Highland Dress employed long hair sporrans for all three modes

-Civilian Evening Dress
-Civilian Outdoor/Day/Morning Dress
-Military Dress

Civilian Highland Dress had far more variety than today and was a bit chaotic, with distinctions between Evening and Day dress being blurred at times. Yet one can discern a pattern, the long hair sporrans for Evening Dress tending to be white hair with a silver cantle, the long hair sporrans for Day Dress tending to be brown-grey hair with plain leather cantle. (Victorian Day Dress tended to avoid metal fittings altogether, usually/often lacking kilt pin, cap badge, etc.)

Then for whatever reason around 1900-1920 the long hair sporrans went out of style in civilian Highland Dress, and a suite of new sporran styles appeared, small and "round" (as a writer in 1910 called them) or as I call them "pocket shaped".

Part of that turn-of-the-century overhaul of Civilian Highland Dress was Evening Dress and Day Dress being far more compartmentalised than before, with each mode having dedicated shirt, neckwear, jacket, sporran, hose, and footwear. They even might wear different kilts Day and Evening, heavyweight worsted for Day and lightweight Saxony for Eve.

The new small pocketlike Evening sporrans were usually sealskin with silver cantles.

The new small pocketlike Day sporrans were generally pigskin, buckskin, or calfskin. They were never dyed black but left in their natural colours.

What you say about pigskin being stiff probably explains it, pigskin being used for the stiffer sporrans and buckskin and calfskin for the supple ones.

Later on they started using cowhide in place of pigskin but as you said they textured the leather to resemble pigskin.

And most of those sporran styles which had appeared by 1920 are still with us today, our "traditional" sporrans.

BTW the outlier was the all-fur animal-mask sporrans, which had appeared at least as far back as the 1880s, pine marten especially. They were the first of the smaller pocketlike sporrans, and were worn only for Outdoor Dress.

Another interesting fad in the early 20th century Day sporrans was the reproduction mid-18th century buckskin sporran with opening brass top.

Here's one firm's Day sporrans in 1936; all were brown.
#14 and #15 are reproduction mid-18th century sporrans, buckskin, with opening brass tops.
#16 and #17 are soft, supple Hunting Sporrans.
#11 and #13 show that brown Day sporrans with fur fronts have always been with us, and were considered ordinary Day sporrans.
There was no concept of a "semi-Dress" sporran until AFAIK the 1970s.



Another firm's Day sporrans in 1938



Another firm's offerings in 1939