Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button?

Kate Flora: I don’t think that I’ve confessed my fondness for buttons here before. I’m not a collector. I don’t have a nice stack of reference books handy to teach me about buttons–their history, materials, etc, or their value. I do sometimes think that someday I will write a mystery featuring a button collector. I’m thinking about buttons today because a kind family member who knows me well gave me a container of buttons for Christmas. (An aside here…I am always happy to take that button box you don’t know what to do with off your hands.)

 

 

What I like about buttons is two-fold. First, I like to sort buttons. Sorting buttons, like ironing, is a very peaceful activity. It’s something I can do while I’m puzzling about a plot, or when the latest book I’m reading disappoints, or when, like today, it is cold and damp and foggy outside. They can be sorted by size, or by color, or by sets, or by buttons that are very different from the others.

Second, poking around in old button boxes can spark an interesting game of: When were these popular? On what sort of garment were they worn and who wore it? On the shelf where I’ve stacked up all the boxes and tins that hold my buttons, I have my grandmother’s button box, a funny old wooden box that used to hold laundry starch. It is only about a third full now, but back when I first discovered it in my mother’s attic, it was full, and sometimes friends and I, or my sister and I, would spend a happy afternoon sorting buttons.

The prettiest ones, or the ones with most interesting shapes or designs, might get sorted into sets and sewn onto cardboard index cards. That box had a lot of black, fabric covered buttons from a time when buttons were the primary mode of fastening clothes and clothes used a lot of them. There were also a lot of small black jet buttons and many small round buttons that must have gone on shoes.

In time, I inherited my mother’s button box, a purple metal candy tin. I still search it today when I need a button for a blouse or my husband’s pants or shorts. Because it is from my childhood, I can find buttons there that were left over from my 4-H sewing projects, or the suit my mother made to wear for church. In another box, I have buttons from sewing projects I did for my own boys–tiny ducks or dinosaurs. There are also some of the small weights that were sewn into women’s suits to make the hems hang right.

 

In my Christmas tin, there were three tiny handprinted wooden duck buttons, and four wooden buttons with psychedelic patterns. Some odd shaped white buttons that must have gone on a dress or a blouse. A single black spangled button. It also contained a lot of buttons with eagles and other insignia suggested military, or military-style clothes. And of course, fabric covered buttons that tell me what kinds of fabrics and prints the owner wore.