It began dawning on me, as I collected more vintage period photos, vintage catalogues, and saw more and more surviving vintage sporrans, that I can't recall coming across a leather Day Dress sporran made in black prior to around 1970.
Even a couple catalogues I have from the 1960s don't offer, picture, or mention anything other than brown.
True that one of the numerous shades of brown offered, going all the way back to the beginnings of our 20th century Day Dress sporrans, was a quite dark brown.
The military leather sporrans were usually in that very dark brown. Sometime, perhaps as early as the 1960s, soldiers began colouring their issued brown sporrans black, and around 1980 the army began issuing hideous glossy black vinyl sporrans. Happily the Royal Regiment of Scotland has returned to the traditional dark brown leather.
My theory is that the civilian black Day Dress sporrans were introduced by the kilt hire industry as a cheaper accompaniment to the ubiquitous black Prince Charlie and Argyll. At the same time sporranmakers began taking bits from Evening sporrans (like the cantle plate from the Prince Charlie seal Evening sporran, and Evening sporran ball & chain tassels) and sticking them on black leather Day sporrans to create the newfangled "semi-dress" sporrans.
In any case I'd love to see vintage period photos or period mentions of vintage black leather civilian Day sporrans. With surviving vintage sporrans there's almost never airtight provenance due to only sporrans with Sterling cantles bearing date marks.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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