Girdle books were in vogue about 400-600 years ago. Making a girdle book isn’t as difficult as it looks if you have a little time and patience. And it’s a very unique and beautiful accessory to contemporary LARP (live action role play) or historical re-enactment events.
Some years ago I decided to make a so-called girdle book. Because I soon opted not to keep it for myself, I took pictures all along the way. Therefore I am lucky to have enough pictures to show you.
Because I didn’t plan to publish the documentation in the first place some of the pictures were blurry or underexposed. I tried to make the best out of it for these postings, so bear with me and my pictures.
What is a girdle book?
Most people don’t even know what a girdle book is. How should they? This is a special type of book which was in vogue about 400-600 years ago. After that time these books vanished, except for a handful of still functioning books. While they weren’t so rare back in the times (as you can see on contemporary artworks), worldwide only about two dozen of those books remain in museums.
As you can see on the illustrations, girdle books had a special book cover. Regular books have the cover material wrapped and glued around the cover on the top, on the bottom and on the front. Just have a look at one of your own hardcover books, preferrable one with a textile cover.
But if you have a look at the girdle books above, you can see that they are hanging upside down. The cover material was only wrapped and glued around the cover on the front and (usually) the top. The cover material extended over the bottom edge and ended in a knot. That knot could be tucked under a belt or girdle. Hence the book swung upside down and could be opened and read even with the knot under the belt.
What was a portable resp. girdle book used for?
There are several forms of portable books: the girdle book itself as well as simpler books with special add-on jackets. People would secure those types of books on a girdle or belt by knots, rings or chains. There were mainly three types of people who would wear and use a portable book:
- Clerics, monks, nuns: They would wear their prayer book or Book of Hours on their belt, ready to be read and studied at any time.
- (Aristocratic) nobles: Since books were expensive and girdle books even more so, wearing such a book would show off (or at least imply) wealth – and hint at being learned (or at least at being able to read). Most of those girdle books of course had religious content as well, like prayer books or Books of Hours.
Since it was fashionable for women to wear a girdle belt above the waistline, such a book also was a bit of a fashion statement. - Wealthy citizens and merchants: Though I haven’t (yet) found any serious documents supporting this, I can imagine that wealthy merchants might have used simpler blank portable books with an exchangeable book jacket for a simple “note-book”. I need to do a bit more research on that topic.
Besides that some apostles or saints often were depicted with a girdle book. You can see examples here (Altar of the “Gertrud brotherhood of the porters”) and here (“Saint Catherine of Siena besieged by demons”).
And I can also image that holding a two-pound book with wooden book boards at its knot and hurling it around would make a good defense against robbery – but don’t quote me on that, just musing about it 😉
A “young” medieval girdle book
My handmade girdle book was made of my own mold-made paper; the miniatures inside are painted with thorn crust ink and artists’ watercolors.
The book is sewn on double cords and has leather-covered book boards with silver clasps. The headband is stitched by hand and the book end papers are hand-marbled.
Step by step I’ll post the detailled instructions for almost every single element of the book. Finding the correct English technical terms for all the procedures currently still is a bit of a challenge though 🙂
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the end I sold this book by auction in favour of a local relief organization for a fair sum. Even though it wasn’t easy to give it away because I put a bit of heart and soul into this project, it was well worth it.
Leave a Reply