Brass Cantled Sporrans - Need Historical Guidance

[ThistleDown]

Found five more on display in the West Highland Museum today.

Five more SETS, Peter? That's a nest, for sure.

Rex

[figheadair]

Five more SETS, Peter? That's a nest, for sure.

Rex

5 more sporrans.

[ThistleDown]

5 more sporrans.

Ah, so we are back to the OP Good.

[figheadair]

Here are five more examples of brass cantled sporrans. all from the west Highland Museum in Fort William.

No1 - Campbell of Glenorchy's (he of the Glencoe massacre) sporran. I guess this must daye to c1700 and so is perhaps the oldest example we have. Appears to have a cow hide bag.



No2



No3



No4



No5 - Rob Roy's Cantle. Interesting celtic marking. This one seems to be of a much higher quality that the others.



Given the incorrect labelling on a number of pieces in the Museum (they are often labelled as they were donated)I have reservations about the attribution of Nos 1 & 5.

[hylander]

Intriguing detail on N0.2 sporran, the center tassel is a single piece of leather which was split where it enters the sporran. Is this functional, does it keep the sporran closed, or is it purely decorative?

Thanks for the pics! Love seeing original oldies.

[figheadair]

Intriguing detail on N0.2 sporran, the center tassel is a single piece of leather which was split where it enters the sporran. Is this functional, does it keep the sporran closed, or is it purely decorative?

Thanks for the pics! Love seeing original oldies.

Certainly nothing to do with the closure mechanism of this type of sporran. Purely decorative I suspect. Cf my sporran in post #36 which is similar.

[figheadair]

I came across this cantle last week. It is part of Regency era sporran but the cantle is clearly much older and was re-used. It has some interesting features that I thought others would be interested to see and may have some thoughts on.



The original stitching holes have been used, and perhaps added to, for riviting the later bag to the cantle. The cantle opens and fastens in the same way as mine - see post #36 but the catch is pulled rather than pushed to open. What intrigues me is the additional catch on the upper right piece. It is clearly contemporary with the rest of the cantle and moves in a short left-right direction. The other side is clearly visable on the left of the cantle front - below.



I'm wondering if this might have been some sort of secondary lock, not that I can see the need as the opening/closing catch is still very firm. Thoughts?

There are a couple of additional features of interest in this cantle. Firstly, the front decoration is fairly simple and doesn't include the concentic circles so often seen on old cantles. The top of the cantle on the other hand is richly decorated with a celtic knot type pattern. Secondly, below the hole on the right hand side can be seen the numbers 172. Again, these look to be contemporary with the sporran. One could speculate that this was intented to be the date. Clearly a number is missing but I cannot think of what else it could be. Could the ten have been assumed at that period and thus 172 equals 1720.

A beautiful and intreging piece.