A number of articles, both useful and ornamental, were suspended from the girdle. For practical purposes the housewife carried at her side, besides a knife, such objects as small scissors in a case, a purse, and also her keys. Cases or étuis for knives were attached either by silken cords or by chains. When cords were employed the cover of the étui was furnished with loops on each side through which the cords slid. Open quiver-like sheaths for knives hung by chains were often worn, in order to display the rich decoration of the knife-heads. [Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII_ RENAISSANCE GIRDLES] The Italianate costume, such as is found in the type of "Vanity" in emblem books of the age, and which made its way everywhere, favoured the addition of many other accessories to the girdles, such as fans, gloves, looking-glasses, books, watches, scent-cases, and pomanders. Mirrors, besides being worn from the neck, formed, as did miniature-cases, a frequent pendant from the girdle. These were either in a frame of ivory or goldsmith's work, or inserted in the fan. Stubbes, the censor of the follies of his day, speaks of the looking-glasses which ladies carried with them "wheresoever they go." Etienne (Stephanus) Delaune has left eight engraved designs for hand mirrors of great beauty. Their handles terminate with small rings for attachment by a chain to the girdle. In the Louvre is an interesting pendent mirror-case, or rather back of a mirror, formed of an oval plaque of glass encrusted with designs in enamel on gold (_émail en résille sur verre_),[169] bearing the inscription "Grace dedans, le lis-ha." [169] Compare pp. 293 and 297. See Darcel (A.), _Notice sur émaux et de l'orfévrerie_ (Louvre), p. 81. See also Labarte (J.), _Les arts industriels_ (2nd ed., II, p. 136, 1873), "_L'émaillerie cloisonnée sur cristal_." Small books, mainly devotional, were also worn at the girdle. It appears to have been a common practice for ladies to carry such books, and in Lyly's _Euphues_ mention is made of "the English damoselles who have theyr bookes tyed to their gyrdles." Queen Elizabeth had several. Amongst the "juelles given to her Majestie at Newyere's-tyde," 1582, was "a litle boke of golde enamuled, garnished and furnished with smale diamondes and rubyes, with claspes, and all hanging at a chayne of golde." The inventory of the jewels of the Duchess of Somerset, widow of the Protector, in 1587, likewise contains "a booke of golde inamyled blacke." Two drawings for small pendent books intended to be executed in niello or black enamel appear amongst Holbein's designs for jewellery in the British Museum; and the Earl of Romney possesses a small manuscript Prayer Book in binding of enamelled gold of the same style.