Codicology

[-JKP-]

One more thing I wanted to point out....

There are some good examples of "carry books", bindings with an extra piece of cloth or leather extending beyond the edge of the binding that was knotted so it could be carried or slung on a belt.

We don't have the original VMS binding, but it was apparently leather-covered boards. Since the VMS is a small format, possibly designed to be portable, I wonder if it might have had one of these knotted handles (I don't know how often these handles were added to leather-and-board bindings):

   

I think these were called "girdle books" (I haven't studied codicology terms). The knotted pouch was sometimes separate from the binding, but a number of them were combination binding-and-handle.


Postscript: I just found some examples of girdle books:



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Another example:



The Karlsruhe girdle book from Germany. WIMPFEL/CC BY-SA 4.0


A blog post on girdle books that includes info on Beinecke library girdle books:

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