Regarding the photo from my web site that was posted here, that is Brian Carpenter, a member of this forum, wearing a box pelated kilt in the Ulster tartan that I made for him. The sporran he is wearing is a perfectly acceptible historic style of sporran (Brian also does a lot of reenacting, and has posted lots of photos of him in his kit on this board).

The sporran is constructed with a single wide strap to suspend it from the belt. It's not a separate peice, it's built into the sporran itself. It likely predates the method of wearing the sporran from a separate thin belt.

The Museum is starting to offer a line of historically inspired hand crafted sporrans from Ferguson-Brit. Each one of his sporrans can be ordered with this kind of loop, or with a standard set-up for a sporran belt. Here's one example, showing the single belt loop:


Obviously, with this kind of sporran, you cannot wear the bag directly in the front as is the usual modern practice, but just off to one side. Of course, this also allows you to slide the sporran around on your belt fairly easily. The "sporran suspenders" that were the original subject of this thread are usually worn so that the sporran is directly in the center of the kilt, with one suspender on either side of the buckle, which makes it much harder to slide the sporran around.

Aye,
Matt