I’ve admired the look of tarsoly for many years, with lots of examples from “The Ancient Hungarians: Exhibition Catalogue” (Fodor, István, ed. The Ancient Hungarians: Exhibition Catalogue. Hungarian National Museum, 1996.).. A tarsoly is a traditional flat leather bag worn from a belt common in Magyar, Khazar, as well as Norse and Rus culture. Some, particularly Magyar examples from the book, have remarkably ornately pattered and gilded cover plates. Others had an arrangement of smaller fittings attached to the leather cover instead of a solid plate. I was drawn to a simpler design with a plain silver plate – originally this project was inspired by the one shown below.

A couple of years ago I purchased a set of silver plated fittings from Armour and Castings which were not exact matches, but had suitable shapes to approximate the fittings for this pouch. I spent a good amount of time between then and now looking at different ways to fabricate the silver rivets to make the pouch. As time passed, I had a change of heart on the overall aesthetic I wanted and decided instead to make the plate based on this similarly simple silver plate from the 10th century Karos-Eperjeszög II. cemetery, grave 52, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Hungary.

Although it is similar construction, consisting of a thin silver plate over a sheet of copper for rigidity, this one has a thin frame of silver and different fittings. In retrospect I could/should? have fabricated some fittings to match the ones shown, but I had and liked the ones that I had from the previous project concept, so I ended up using them, so the final project is kind of a mashup of the two.

I made my tarsoly inspired by the one above. It’s very close in scale to the extant piece, which is a pretty compact. The plate is 24 gauge spring hard sterling silver, over 20 gauge copper plate, and the frame is 18 gauge fine silver. The pouch is lined with wool and bound the edges with a thin deerskin. The top hook is fabricated of silver to match the fittings and allows the pouch to be easily fastened to the holes in my belt (it also has a loop so that it can be switched to other belts easily). The background of the fittings are gilded with gold leaf to match the fittings on my belt. Below is the finished project.