The explicit mystery of the codpiece ...

A codpiece is a covering flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of men's trousers and usually accentuates the genital area. It was held closed by string ties, buttons, or other methods. It was an important item of European clothing in the 15th and 16th centuries

As time passed, codpieces became shaped and padded to emphasize rather than to conceal, reaching their peak of size and decoration in the 1540s before falling out of use by the 1590s. Scholars have noted that the appearance of Renaissance codpiece was coincident with aggressive spread of syphilis in the early 16th century, and suggest that it may have first served to allow extra room in the clothing for bandages or other dressings for the afflicted male member.

 Armor of the 16th century followed civilian fashion, and for a time armored codpieces were a prominent addition to the best full harnesses. A few of these are on display in museums today: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has one, as does the Higgins Armory in Worcester, Massachusetts; the armor of Henry VIII in the Tower of London has a codpiece. In later periods, the codpiece became an object of the derision showered on outlandish fashions. Renaissance humorist François Rabelais jokingly refers to a book titled On the Dignity of Codpieces in the foreword to his book The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Wolf Hall TV show uses 'too small' Tudor codpieces for fear of baffling US audiences

Mark Rylance, the star of BBC's Wolf Hall, reveals the impressive codpieces of the Tudor court were made smaller out of respect for audiences

Hannah Furness By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent7:00AM GMT 12 Dec 2014 /

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11288129/Wolf-Hall-TV-show-uses-too-small-Tudor-codpieces-for-fear-of-baffling-US-audiences.html

They may have been the crowning glory for any right-thinking Tudor gentleman, but it appears the traditional codpiece may be a little too much for American television viewers.

The stars of Wolf Hall, the BBC’s new period drama based on the novels of Hilary Mantel, have disclosed they have been issued with “smaller”-than average codpieces, out of respect for viewers' sensibilities.

Mark Rylance, who stars as Thomas Cromwell in the forthcoming BBC series, said programme-makers had decided on “very small codpieces” which had to be “tucked away”.

He suggested allowances had been made amid concerns about the taste of modern audiences, particularly in America, who “may not know exactly what’s going on down there”.

It is one of few concessions permitted by programme-makers, who have otherwise gone to remarkable lengths to ensure historical accuracy, including trips to Shakespeare’s Globe to learn sword-fighting, lessons in etiquette and bowing, and a comprehensive study on spoons.

Mantel has given her seal of approval to the production, issuing a statement of glowing praise for how it has been adapted on screen.

Saying she was pleased programme-makers had resisted the temptation to “patronise” the Tudors to make them “cute”, she said: “My expectations were high and have been exceeded.”

When asked about the costumes in a Q&A to launch the BBC show, alongside actors Damian Lewis and Claire Foy, Rylance said they “did take a while to put on” but praised the overall effect.

“I think the codpieces are too small,” he added. “I think it was a direction from our American producers PBS [the US public service broadcaster] – they like very small codpieces which always seemed to be tucked away.”

When asked to clarify, he said: “I wasn’t personally disappointed by the codpieces: I’m a little more used to them than other people from being at the Globe for ten years.

“But I can see for modern audiences, perhaps more in America, they may not know exactly what’s going on down there.”

Lewis, who plays Henry VIII, hinted there had been some on-set “giggling” over the matter, with the curtain-like effect of the male costumes finally making it a moot point.

“Codpieces at the time in the Tudor period were a symbol of virility and actually men of the court were encouraged to wear prominent cod pieces,” he said. “It was a symbol of your virility, your derring-do, your sense of adventure.

“They were encouraged, it was a fashion, and Henry liked them.”

Colin Callender, the executive producer, later clarified there had been “no hidden codpiece memo” handed down by PBS or the BBC.

Foy, who plays Anne Boleyn, added costumes had been created and worn with meticulous detail, with no zips or Velcro added for ease and constant vigilance about whether everyone on set had the correct attire.

As well as teaching the cast to swordfight and being taught the difference between the bows suitable for Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, programme-makers also paid particular attention to who would be joining in the relatively new fashion for using a spoon.

“We had to make a decision on whether Thomas More was a spoon kind of guy,” Peter Kosminsky, the director, said. “Anne Boleyn went for spoons in a big way.”

The team relied heavily on the scholarship of Hilary Mantel, who spent five years researching the Tudor court before writing the Man Booker Prize-winning novels.

Peter Straughan, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter, said had known “absolutely nothing” about Tudor history beforehand, joking he had kept a copy of the “Dummies Guide to Elizabethans” on his desk to help him along.

Callender added he hoped the drama would perfectly suit modern audiences, who have already enjoyed high-tension programmes such as Breaking Bad.

Referring to Cromwell’s mixed reputation, he said: “Modern audiences are fascinated by characters that cross moral lines, trapped between doing the right thing and surviving.”

Wolf Hall, a six-part series covering the first two novels of Mantel’s trilogy, is due for broadcast on BBC One in January.

A little article on the history of the codpiece…

Lucy Worsley / http://www.lucyworsley.com/a-little-article-on-the-history-of-the-codpiece/

‘There is no hidden codpiece memo.’

So says Colin Callendar, executive producer of the upcoming BBC Two drama series Wolf Hall, denying claims that the size of his stars’ codpieces were reduced beyond the point of historical accuracy to avoid offending or baffling an American audience.

Actor Damian Lewis did indeed describe the black velvet codpiece that came with his costume as Henry VIII as a ‘little dinky one.’  But it was Mark Rylance, playing Thomas Cromwell himself, who provided a possible reason why, claiming that ‘modern audiences, perhaps more in America’ might ‘not know exactly what’s going on down there.’

So what exactly is this controversial garment?  The codpiece is buttoned, or tied with strings, to a man’s breeches.  It takes its name from the word ‘cod’, middle English for both ‘bag’ and ‘scrotum’, and arose because medieval men wore hose – essentially, very long socks – beneath their doublets, and nothing else in the way of underwear.

When the fourteenth-century fashion for very short doublets emerged, the codpiece was invented to cover up the gap at the top of those hose.   If you believe ‘the Parson’ in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, it was a much-needed innovation.  He disliked the short doublets of his day because ‘Alas! Some of them show the very boss of their penis and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of hernia’.

Originally just a triangle of cloth, the codpiece became more substantial and more decorative as time went on, until its decline in the late sixteenth century.

The codpiece, of course, forms part of the picture of Henry VIII that we all carry round in our heads.  In the portraits after Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry’s enormous codpiece emphasizes his virility, and hence his capacity for providing England with heirs to the throne.  It forms the very centerpiece of Holbein’s drawing (‘The Whitehall Cartoon’) that gives us Henry’s definitive image.

None of Henry’s fabric codpieces survive, but the suit of his 1540 armour displayed at the Tower of London also has an enormous codpiece in metal, and its size suggests that Holbein was not exaggerating.  Female visitors to the Tower used to stick pins into its lining in the hope that this would increase their own fertility.

Codpieces also functioned a useful little purse for storing precious items like coins, or jewels, and tradition claims this as the origin of the expression ‘a man’s family jewels.’

They are garments that tend to arouse wonder and disbelief in post-Tudor viewers, so much so that the Museum of London has a whole drawer of codpieces that were catalogued, by a bashful Victorian curator, as ‘shoulder pads’.

But none of them were quite as big as the one worn by Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder, in his first, late-medieval, incarnation.  For his installation as Archbishop of Canterbury, Blackadder decides to wear his best and biggest codpiece.

‘Let’s go for the Black Russian,’ he tells Lord Percy.  ‘It always terrifies the clergy.’

Round 2 / Hacking Jacket / Late 60s , from My Collection ... Jeeves.

The Origins of The Hacking Jacket

BY ARCHIE HUME / http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the-hacking-jacket/

“Traditionally, as the name suggests, a Hacking Jacket was a tweed jacket worn for riding. The key features of today’s Hacking Jackets remain unchanged and all owe their roots to maintaining a stylish appearance in the saddle.

The lapels on a Hacking Jacket meet mid-chest, the jacket is lightly tailored at the waist and there are three buttons. The origins of these features are functional and stylistic. All contribute to a secure, semi-fitted jacket that allows for free movement in the saddle. A longer lapel and any less than three buttons, and the jacket would be likely to gape.

A Hacking Jacket is traditionally cut a little longer, with a long single vent at the back. Again this is designed to create a more refined silhouette in the saddle. The single vent opens over the saddleback and the front panels sit neatly on the thigh. For the contemporary wearer the effect is equally flattering, creating as it does an elongated, elegant line.

The Hacking Jacket

The pockets are slanted on a Hacking Jacket to make it easier for a rider to access them in a seated position. Today they retain this heritage feature and you will also find an additional ticket pocket on a Hacking Jacket, just above the right pocket and slightly smaller in size.”(…) 

In: http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the-hacking-jacket/

Ruth Rendell, crime writer, dies aged 85

Ruth Rendell obituary

Crime novelist famed for her Inspector Wexford books who also wrote dark and chilling thrillers under the pen name Barbara Vine

 Stanley Reynolds

Saturday 2 May 2015  / http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/02/ruth-rendell-obituary-crime-writer

Ruth Rendell, Lady Rendell of Babergh, also known as Barbara Vine, who has died aged 85, was a literary phenomenon. From 1964, when her country copper, Reg Wexford, first stepped before the reading public in From Doon With Death, she wrote more than 50 crime novels and seven books of short stories. Many of them were adapted for television or made into feature films; the Wexford books in particular were an enormous success on TV, with the actor George Baker playing Wexford as a big, gruff, rural policeman, solving crime in the fictional Sussex town of Kingsmarkham.

But Rendell was never satisfied with producing the annual whodunnit. She demonstrated this when, rather than follow her first Wexford novel with more of the same, she daringly jumped away from the classic English mystery in her second book, To Fear a Painted Devil (1965), and gave readers a taste of the psychological thrillers to come.

The cliched view of Rendell is that she suddenly changed her style when, in the 1980s, she started writing as Barbara Vine, but the truth is that from the beginning, even in the Wexford tales, she concentrated more on character and psychology than old-fashioned police procedure. She wrote 24 Wexford books and produced an equal number of thrillers under the name Rendell. Her first novel as Barbara Vine was A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986), which won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe award. The next year, a second Barbara Vine, A Fatal Inversion, won her the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger.

The big difference with the Barbara Vine stories was that in them she went inside the heads of her psychopathic killers and rapists. It was this that made them so dark and chilling, an uncomfortable read for fans of Wexford who were used to the protection of the country officer standing between them and an unsafe world. Because of this, Rendell’s fans fell into two rather warring camps, those who liked the Wexford stories and those who felt that Barbara Vine was a great “real” novelist breaking new ground. The books were all, however, bestsellers. There might also have been a third camp, those who loved her wonderful short stories. This was a dying, or dead, market in Britain, but Rendell was able to sell short stories in the US to publications such as the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

Although Rendell did not like the title often bestowed on her – queen of crime – calling it snide and sexist, she did not go along with the many reviewers, among them AN Wilson and PD James, who called her a great novelist. “Nobody in their senses is going to call me a first-class writer,” she said. “I don’t mind because I do the very best that I can and thousands, millions of people enjoy my books.”

A very private person, who could get prickly with interviewers, she nevertheless said that she was going to take an active part in politics when she was made a life peer in 1997. That year she had given £10,000 to the Labour election campaign. In the Lords, Rendell supported the bill to legalise assisted suicide: “The way I’m going it won’t be long, but all my aunts lived into their 90s.”.

Daughter of Ebba (nee Krause) and Arthur Grasemann, she was born in South Woodford, north-east London. Her mother, who had been born in Sweden and lived in Denmark until she was 12, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and Ruth, an only child, was brought up in part by a housekeeper to whom, she said, she was much closer than she was to her mother. Her father she described as “endlessly patient, endlessly loving, and endlessly kind”. She put a lot of him into Wexford.

She went to Loughton high school, in Essex, and was, she said, very unhappy. But she began to find herself when she left school and became a journalist. She worked on the Chigwell Times and by the age of 22 was a top reporter. Trouble came her way when she wrote a story about an old deserted house and invented a ghost; the owner of the house threatened to sue. Shortly afterwards she skipped the annual meeting of a local tennis club and wrote the story up from the chairman’s pre-prepared speech of which she had a copy. After her piece appeared in print she learned that the chairman had dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of delivering it. She quit before she was sacked.

Aged 20 she had married Don Rendell, a reporter whom she met when they were both covering an inquest. He became a financial journalist on the Daily Mail and for 10 years Rendell was a wife and mother. She described these as happy years but during that time she went through a long apprenticeship, writing six novels, all of which were rejected. When her seventh, From Doon With Death, was accepted by the small publishing house of John Long, she received £75 for it. “No interviews then,” she said, “nor for the next two novels.”

Later she was frequently interviewed, though she was never a willing subject. Asked once too often what she would have been if she hadn’t become a novelist, she said a country and western singer. It came as a shock when, during an interview oon Norwegian TV, she was handed a microphone and asked to sing. Asked on BBC Radio 4 about how she wrote her short stories, she said: “Oh they just come to me.” She described what drove her to write by saying: “I like to sit at a desk and type.”

Rendell claimed that, when writing her novels, she never did any research but “simply made things up”. Later on, she hired a researcher, but the great detail she gave her stories was the result, she said, of going on long walks, especially in London. She became an expert on parks in the capital.

Her hobby was changing houses; she moved 18 times. For several years, she lived in a pink 16th-century manor house set in 11 acres in Suffolk, before returning to London. Her only digression from a rather set, humdrum routine came when in 1975 she divorced her husband and then two years later remarried him. Asked why, she said that after they separated, she found she couldn’t live without him, because he was the sort of man with whom you could go on a 200-mile car trip and never have to say a word.

The Mystery Writers of America gave her three Edgars and the British Crimewriters’ Association awarded her several Golden and Silver Daggers. In 1991 she received the Cartier Diamond award for outstanding contribution to the crime genre. She showed no sign of slowing up: No Man’s Nightingale, published in 2013, was a classic Wexford; and in 2014 she created a new detective, Colin Quell, for The Girl Next Door.

Rendell was very generous and gave a large amount of money away. She was vice-president of the housing charity Shelter and raised money for Little Hearts Matter, which helps children with heart disease. She said she knew what it was like to have no cash, adding: “I don’t think it’s good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.”

Her husband died in 1999. She is survived by her son, Simon.

• Ruth Barbara Rendell, Lady Rendell of Babergh, writer, born 17 February 1930; died 2 May 2015

 Ruth Rendell, crime writer, dies aged 85

Creator of Inspector Wexford, who also wrote as Barbara Vine, was admitted to hospital after serious stroke in January

Alison Flood and Vanessa Thorpe

Saturday 2 May 2015 / http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/02/ruth-rendell-writer-dies-aged-85

Ruth Rendell, one of Britain’s best-loved authors, who delighted fans for decades with her dark, intricately plotted crime novels, has died at the age of 85, her publisher has announced.

Baroness Rendell of Babergh, the creator of Inspector Wexford and author of more than 60 novels, had been admitted to hospital after a serious stroke in January and died in London on Saturday morning. The statement from her publisher, Hutchinson, said her family had requested privacy.

The crime writer Val McDermid voiced the sorrow of many Rendell fans when she heard the news.

“Ruth Rendell was unique. No one can equal her range or her accomplishment; no one has earned more respect from her fellow practitioners,” McDermid said.

 “The broad church that is current British crime writing owes much to a writer who over a 50-year career consistently demonstrated that the genre can continually reinvent itself, moving in new directions, assuming new concerns and exploring new ways of telling stories. And doing it all in a smoothly satisfying prose style.”

Baroness Gail Rebuck, chair of Penguin Random House UK, of which Hutchinson is an imprint, said: “Ruth was much admired by the whole publishing industry for her brilliant body of work. An insightful and elegant observer of society, many of her award-winning thrillers and psychological murder mysteries highlighted the causes she cared so deeply about.

“She was a great writer, a campaigner for social justice, a proud mother and grandmother, a generous and loyal friend and probably the best read person I have ever met. Her many close friends in publishing and the House of Lords will greatly miss her wonderful company and her truly unique contribution to our lives.”

Susan Sandon, the managing director of Cornerstone, which runs Hutchinson, also paid tribute to Rendell’s life and work: “Ruth was beloved as an author and a friend – to me, and to so many of us. Her writing and her company enriched all our lives. Erudite, wise and endlessly entertaining, she will be so greatly missed.”

Rendell’s novels included the Inspector Wexford crime series and the psychological thrillers she wrote as Barbara Vine. Her debut, From Doon with Death, introduced the world to Wexford in 1964.

 “He sort of is me, although not entirely,” the author told the Observer in 2013 when the inspector made his 24th outing, in No Man’s Nightingale. “Wexford holds my views pretty well on most things, so I find putting him on the page fairly easy.”

Rendell landed her £75 publishing deal with Hutchinson after around a decade of life as a mother and housewife; she had been a journalist on the Chigwell Times, but resigned after it emerged that her report of a local tennis club dinner had been written without attending the event, meaning she missed the death of the after-dinner speaker during his speech.

Her novels, from A Judgement in Stone, which opens with the line: “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read and write”, to last year’s The Girl Next Door, which sees the bones of two severed hands discovered in a box, cover topics from racism to domestic violence.

The books have, her friend Jeanette Winterson has said, been “a major force in lifting crime writing out of airport genre fiction and into both cutting-edge and mainstream literature”.

Ian Rankin said he had viewed Rendell as “probably the greatest living crime writer” and added that “if crime fiction is currently in rude good health, its practitioners striving to better the craft and keep it fresh, vibrant and relevant, this is in no small part thanks to Ruth Rendell”.

Rendell’s death closely follows that of fellow crime writer PD James, her good friend and political opponent in the House of Lords.

A tribute by the broadcaster and writer Mark Lawson this weekend called them “the George Eliot and Jane Austen of the homicidal novel: different minds and style but equal talent”. He credited them with saving British detective fiction from the disdain of serious literary critics.

The crime writer Simon Brett said Rendell’s output was astonishing and was amazed by her her transition into Vine.

“I cannot think of another example of an author who has moved up a gear so dramatically,” he said on Saturday. “I had always enjoyed her books but when the first Vine book, A Dark Adapted Eye, came out, it was such a change of style.

“I last saw her when she was giving a speech last year and she was mesmerising. Although it was always quite spooky, because she was so affable in person and yet you knew she could summon up dark places in her mind.”

Rendell told the Guardian two years ago: “Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages.

“I just wait until I’ve got a character and I think, why would anybody do that, what is it in their background, what is it in their lives makes them do it?”

Rendell won prizes including the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for “sustained excellence in crime writing”, and, as a Labour life peer, helped pass a law preventing girls being sent abroad for female genital mutilation.

She was regularly in the Lords, and recently completed another novel for her publisher, Hutchinson, telling the Guardian in 2013 that she had no plans to retire.

“I couldn’t do that. It’s what I do and I love doing it. It’s absolutely essential to my life. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t write,” she said. “I’ll do it until I die, won’t I? If I can. You don’t know, but probably.”

'Home Fires'/ TONIGHT in ITV / Home Fires trailer | ITV

‘Home Fires’ / TONIGHT in ITV / ITV’s World War 2 drama series Home Fires will premiere on Sunday May 3rd at 9pm, it has been announced./ VÍDEO: Home Fires trailer | ITV

Acclaimed British actresses Francesca Annis and Samantha Bond will lead an impressive ensemble cast in new six-part drama Home Fires (previously Jambusters) for ITV.

The cast will also include, Ruth Gemmell (Utopia), Mark Bonnar (Line of Duty), Claire Rushbrook (Collision), Mark Bazeley (The Suspicions of Mr Whicher), Frances Grey (The Widower) and Ed Stoppard (Cilla).

ITV commissioned Home Fires earlier this year from producers ITV Studios.

The drama follows a group of inspirational women in a rural Cheshire community with the shadow of World War II casting a dark cloud over their lives. The isolated village couldn’t feel further away from the impending bloodshed and battlefields and yet it is not immune from the effects of war. As the conflict takes hold, and separates the women from their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, the characters find themselves under increasing and extraordinary pressures in a rapidly fragmenting world.

By banding together as the Great Paxford Women’s Institute, they will help maintain the nation’s fabric in its darkest hour, and discover inner resources that will change their lives forever.

Created and written by Simon Block (Lewis, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, Attachments) with episodes co -written by Mark Burt (Coronation Street, The Dumping Ground), and Tina Pepler (Downton Abbey, Princes in the Tower), Home Fires will be produced by the ITV Studios department overseen by Francis Hopkinson (Wallander, Lucan, Chasing Shadows).  The drama has been developed by Catherine Oldfield (Collision, Fingersmith, Foyle’s War) who executive produces alongside Francis. Sue de Beauvoir (Shetland, Strike Back) will produce episodes 1-3 and Jeremy Gwilt (Foyle’s War, Undeniable) episodes 4 - 6.

Home Fires is inspired by the non-fiction book ‘Jambusters’ written by Julie Summers, who is delighted production is about to commence and that she has secured an Alfred Hitchcock style role in the drama.

“I am thrilled to be appearing in a cameo role as a WI county organiser,” said Julie. “My grandmother, a life-long WI member, would undoubtedly approve of me wearing a hat.”

The series has been commissioned for ITV by Director of Drama Steve November and Controller of Drama Victoria Fea.

“We’re really delighted to have commissioned Home Fires,” said Steve November. “Great writing from Simon has given Julie Summers' wonderful book a fictional life.  The women are real and engaging and have fantastic spirit and attitude.  With World War II on the horizon, multiple strands of plot interweave to create a period drama full of jeopardy and intrigue, but also great humanity and modernity,” added Steve. 

Executive Producer Francis Hopkinson commented: "Thanks to Simon Block's brilliant script, inspired by Julie Summers's book, this series will take a fresh look at life on the Home Front, showing both the tragedies and the triumphs, and offering some wonderful roles for Britain's top actresses. We are delighted that ITV share our enthusiasm for the project."

The episodes 1-3 will be directed by Bruce Goodison (Our World War, My Murder, 10 Days to War) with Robert Quinn (Death in Paradise, Primeval) directing the final 3 episodes of the series. Filming will take place in Cheshire from September continuing until December.

The drama will also feature Rachel Hurd-Wood (Return of Sherlock Holmes), Leila Mimmack (Law & Order: UK), Claire Price (Doctors), Daniel Ryan (Mount Pleasant), Will Attenborough (Utopia), Clare Calbraith (Vera), Chris Coghill (The Driver), Brian Fletcher (The Passing Bells), Fenella Woolgar (Case Histories), Leanne Best (Lucan), Mike Noble (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time), Jacqueline Pilton (The Royal), Mark Umbers (Eternal Law), Jodie Hamblet (My Mad Fat Diary 2), Adam Long (Happy Valley), Paul Barnhill (Foyle’s War), Anthony Calf (Upstairs Downstairs), Nicola Sloane (Dancing on the Edge), Jim Whelan and Daisy Badger.

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/production-commences-world-war-ii-drama-home-fires

The Scottish "SPORRAN" ...

 The sporran (Scottish Gaelic for "purse"), a traditional part of male Scottish Highland dress, is a pouch that performs the same function as pockets on the pocketless kilt. Made of leather or fur, the ornamentation of the sporran is chosen to complement the formality of dress worn with it. The sporran is worn on a leather strap or chain, conventionally positioned in front of the groin of the wearer.

Since the traditional kilt does not have pockets, the sporran serves as a wallet and container for any other necessary personal items. It is essentially a survival of the common European medieval belt-pouch, superseded elsewhere as clothing came to have pockets, but continuing in the Scottish Highlands because of the lack of these accessories in traditional dress. The sporran hangs below the belt buckle; and much effort is made to match their style and design. The kilt belt buckle can be very ornate, and contain similar motifs to the sporran cantle and the Sgian Dubh. Early sporrans would have been worn suspended from the belt on one or other of the hips, rather than hung from a separate strap in front of the wearer.

When driving a car, dancing, playing drums, or engaging in any activity where a heavy pouch might encumber the wearer, the sporran can be turned around the waist to let it hang on the hip in a more casual position.

Day sporrans

Day sporrans are usually brown leather shovel pouches with simple adornment. These "day" sporrans often have three or more leather tassels and frequently Celtic knot designs carved or embossed into the leather.

Dress sporrans

Dress sporrans can be larger than the day variety, and are often highly ornate. Victorian examples were usually quite ostentatious, and much more elaborate than the simple leather pouch of the 17th or 18th centuries. They can have sterling or silver-plated cantles trimming the top of the pouch and a fur-covered face with fur or hair tassels. The cantle may contain intricate filigree or etchings of Celtic knots. The top of the cantle may have a set stone, jewel, or emblems such as Saint Andrew, a thistle, Clan, or Masonic symbols.

Animal mask sporrans

Animal mask sporrans are made from the pelts of mammals such as the badger, otter, fox, pine marten, or other small animals, with the head forming a flap that folds over the front and closes the opening at the top of the sporran.

Horsehair sporrans

Horsehair sporrans are most often worn as a part of regimental attire. Pipers will often wear the most flamboyant sporrans with long horsehair that swishes from side to side as the piper marches.

LISBON , PORTUGAL / April 2015

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