Sporran & Pouch Blog

This site is designed to make your shopping experience pleasant and worth the effort. I f you dont think so or have any issues with the site or its contents or just my mutterings, then please feel free to join the site and comment or indeed email me your coments and moanings to - email being created-. for now until I have had a chance to set another email address.

Anyway, so any comments about the sealskin article I have written on the current info page? As a matter of interest, I have, after lots of searching found some artificial faux or fake fur. I have it black or what they call chinchilla which is a kind of nice grey with a darker stripe running through it. Both actually look and feel pretty good which is nice.

It will also appeal to those of you that have a problem wearing  animal  skins and in particular sealskin. It also means that I can at long last offer something that is not animal based for sporrans. I have actually always been sensitive to this issue and try to take a balanced view of this fur issue - as you will see in my article.

So whats new? - well there is the faux fur sporrans. I am also about to produce some rather nice and classy leather trouser belts. The will be made in the traditional way of belt making using hand tools like the traditional plough knife and edge crease. I will also be using some bridle hide and traditinonally tanned shoulder or butt leathers. The colours will be a black , tan or rather nice chestnutty leather. These leathers also smell nice and are a pleasure to work with.

Helping me will be a guy called Ian Dunlop. Ian is a local lad, who was trained in Walsall, the real heart of leather goods making in England. Ian is a self employed traditionally trained leatherworker - in this day and age, this is indeed rare but really good for us. He joined our team in January this year and has aready helped to develop or tweed range of sporrans - see our day section -  and our range of Naver kilt belts.

So, come Monday Sept 1st, we start to make our website samples. I will Photograph them and put them up. I have already created a section for them on the main website. I take all our product photos - very simple, but hopefully clear - so watch this space!

Recently, I was on Sky Television news regarding the Canadian Seal Cull. This started in January of this year when I was visited by a person interested in importing sporrans and handbag type stuff into Japan. It turns out she had a hidden camera and was from a wildlife type organisation to try and discover if we were using sealskin specifically culled in Canada.

This led to a camera crewe visiting us a couple of months ago to talk about the Canadian cull.

Well quite honestly, I am very concious of this whole thing. from different points of view. Thre is the cruelty issue - of how the seals are culled. The photos you see of seals being clubbed to death on the ice floes is very emotional. However, how many photos do you see of calfs and cows etc being led into abbatoirs to be slaughtered.? We eat and wear the products from this practice. Is it not a similar thing in practice?

Seals are either clubbed or shot. It is now illegal to club seals - they have by law to be shot, although some in practice are still clubbed, but this is dying out. The pictures you see also show very young seals when the seal pups are still white being clubbed. This is old footage. This practice is banned. In Europe you cannot bring these skins in anyway.. We in sporran making use older seals and some very old ones. The tanning process used for us is not a fur tanning process. Sporran makers use a tiny proportion of all the seals killed. This is easy to prove because of the tanning process used. We use skins that are chrome tanned - a faster ,coarser process. The fast majority are fur tanned - for fur coats and trimmings and end up in Europe, and the far east.

The popular belief that seal carcases are left to rot on the floes is  nonsense. A very high percentage of the carcases are used for example for producing omega oils and other things. and most of the skins are turned into fur or hair on hide for making sporrans and shoes(Norway).Hair on hide in seals is made it a very similar way to cowhide hair on hide, wish is used for making all sorts of things.

The Canadians and Inuits involved in the cull also need jobs to sutain themselves. There is also the argument that without the cull the fish stocks would go down pretty heavily unless the seal population is controlled and livliehoods are at stake and indeed ways of life. It could be argued that celebrities who highlight the cull etc are rich and can afford to shout about it. Would they know what its like to be in serious difficulty when it comes to feeding your family?

Anyway, I tried to be neutral with the TV folk and suggested there are alternatives to sealskin - like Bovine (or cowhode) - but I wonder when you really get down to it if morally it comes down to the same thing - accepting that animals are killed by humans to live- always have done and always will.

If the European,s introduce a sealskin ban - which they are threatening to do then livelihoods and ways of life will be effectively destroyed. The Americans already ban it. However would you beleive that I, if I wish can import from America every type and species of fox, Wolverine, Bearskin, Badger, Coyote, Skunk, Beaver etc into Europe without any restriction.Now who is being hypocrtical? I bet the celebs and Europeans do nothing about that!!

Farmworkers in the States (all over) supplement their income in the winter by trapping and shooting - very very big in America. Most of these skins get turned into fur coats.

So at the end of the day its really just about politics and what issues can get the biggest votes and thats not being cynical.

Our morals in our business of making sporrans says that we do not use animal products that have been specifically killed for making sporrans. All of our stuff is a byproduct of other industries and that is the truth of it.

Workshop

Our workshop is located eight miles south of Edinburgh in Midlothian, Scotland.

In the Info page, there is a history of the sporran, but nothing as to how it is made. This section is devoted to just how a sporran is made.

As a sample of this, I will describe how a dress or formal sporran is made.

HOW A DRESS SPORRAN IS MADE

Ok so how is a sporran made? Well first off the skin has to be chosen. This could be Seal, Bovine, Leather,rabbit or Artificial Longhaired black or artificial chinchilla- yes we are now using artificial fabrics and yes,they do look good - see our new artificial category.

Once the skin is chosed, the shape of the sporran is cut out. This is then glued to the stiffner, which helps to give the sporran its structural rigidity. The gusset - this forms the pocket or bag - is then cut and made up. This has to be done very carefully, or it can twist which will create a wear problem. The gusset is then attached to the front. Again this has to be done very carefully or the front of the sporran will either belly out or belly in, making the finished sporran look strange.

The back is the cut out, the chain hanger attached. In the meantime the tassels are cut and made and attached to the front. The back is then glueud to the front and is stitched and bound in one operation. Bound simply means the outer edge of the sporran is covered and not let “raw” ie it is a finishing technique.

Now its time to put the cantle or top on. The cantle is decorative and can be in a chrome or what is called an antique finish - duller. The cantle is literally bolted to the sporran. The whloe thing is then steamed if necessary to take out any creases in the skin, dried, boxed with an appropriate chain strap and out to you the customer. Sounds simple - but there are many skills involved which have been developed over the years - and being self taught, I have passed on my skills to others - a lot through some very painful trial and error experiences to what we are now — Possibly the best sporran maker in the World!!

View our collection of Dress Sporrans

Traditional Scottish Highland dress is the preferred attire for most formal Scottish occasions, especially Weddings, graduations and of course, ceilidhs. The centrepiece of the outfit is clearly the kilt, which is worn with shirt, waistcoat and jacket, although it can be worn with the less formal Jacobite style shirt. The two more formal variations of the formal outfit are the Argyle and the Bonnie Prince Charlie dress styles.

The main difference between the two is the Argyle’s five button waistcoat, worn with scrunch tie, as opposed to the Bonnie Prince Charlie’s three button waistcoat and bow tie.

No highland dress outfit would be complete without kilt hose, ghillie brogues, kilt pin, Sguin Dubhs and of course the sporran. Of these, I would regard the sporran as the most essential item. Other than the kilt, every other article can be removed or substituted. Not many will notice the absence of kilt pin or Sguin Dubhs.

You will also find that it is practically a tradition at some weddings that the jacket and waistcoat are removed after dinner. Sometimes the shirt is swapped for white T shirt and ghillies for dancing shoes. Yet, the sporran is rarely - if ever – removed, because without it, the outfit simply does not look right. The next time you get a chance, try the full outfit on without the sporran – you will see what I mean.

Due to the absence of pockets on a kilt, Sporrans were born out of necessity. The first ones originated when kilts were quite basic - long lengths of densely woven wool that were looped over the shoulder and gathered around the waist by a belt.

The highlanders developed pouches worn around the waist to keep essentials in.
Using leather as a material, the pouch also functioned as a guard to protect the groin. This would have proved very useful during close combat.

Today, the Sporran is an integral part of your highland dress. It is worn on a chain or leather strap through the belt loops of the kilt and adjusted at a convenient height for a free hand to reach into.  Sporrans vary in size but you will find more than enough room in them to hold all your possessions.

Sporrans come in three types. The daywear sporran is modest in design. They are normally made from leather and used during hunting to hold bullets, etc. or for day to day use. The dress sporran is usually larger and more decorative than the day sporran and reserved for formal occasions. They are traditionally crafted from downy animal furs such as sealskin or rabbit. The last kind of sporran is the semi dress variety. These are a compromise between the two.

Sporrans are made from a wide range of materials; both natural and faux fur.  These include leather, sealskin, rabbit, bovine, chinchilla and many more.

Read about the history and how Highland Dress is worn.