Small Collectables - Buttons

Buttons for Children

The little buttons shown here are all 20th century children's plastic buttons. You really won't find buttons specifically made for children much before the mid-20th century but then there are so many to choose from that you could restrict a collection to just this area of interest.

Many were (and still are) produced with children's book and TV characters and just as many picture or are made to the shape of cute little animals. As you can see, they come in many shapes and sizes.

The ladybird buttons come from clothing made by the Ladybird brand. My son had a Ladybird dressing gown which featured these buttons when he was just a toddler.

It goes without saying that these buttons would make an excellent start to a collection for a child.

Artid buttons

Buttons are extremely difficult to date with any accuracy. When all buttons were hand made, they were expensive and consequently might be used over a greatly extended period of time. They would have been salvaged from any worn out garment and kept in a safe place or re-used immediately. Buttons were passed from one generation to the next and Granny's button box was always a wonder to explore.

There are some exceptions to this. Some buttons bear a maker's name and can therefore be dated to a specific period but few can be dated to so narrow a window of time as the Artid buttons.

These are plastic buttons with various exotic panels to the fronts. On the reverse they are marked as shown in the photograph below 'Artid Made in England'. These buttons were only in production for a very few years in the late 1940s and most were put into storage without ever being sold. The company was owned by two German brothers, who started producing the buttons in 1946 / 47 but, probably because rationing was still in force and fabrics were not easy to obtain, the buttons were not commercially successful. Most of the production was put into storage and forgotten about until demolition men found the old stored boxes some 40 years later.

There is a very interesting entry on Facebook about Artid buttons.

Satsuma buttons

Satsuma ware has that distinctive crackle which cannot be imitated and was produced over an extended period. Buttons like this one, with a self shank and backmarked 'Japan' (hand painted) probably date to around the middle of the 20th century but many similar could well be considerably older.

Satsuma buttons are very popular with collectors and, whereas this has a simple spray of flowers, many are highly pictorial with scenes of Japanes figures and life. The very best may sell for over £100 but it is still perfectly possible to pick up smaller, less decorative (relatively speaking) Satsuma buttons for around £15 or less.

I would love to have an entire collection of Satsuma buttons, every one is a work of art in its own right and perhaps gives us a hint of buttons not only used for a practical purpose as a closure for a garment but also as a substitute for more expensive jewellery. With the right sets of buttons the addition of all but the simplest jewellery would be overkill.

Enamel buttons

Enamel buttons are a whole class unto themselves and a wonderful area to concentrate a collection. Enamelling is an ancient art.

They come in many shapes and sizes and fall into several different types. There is cloisonné enamel, painted enamel and champlevé enamel and which is which can be confusing for the beginner.

Cloisonné enamel is the technique of laying powdered glass over a metal base (copper, silver or gold) which is then heated so that the glass melts forming a smooth transparent surface, in this method, flattened wires are laid to contain the enamelled design.

Painted enamel is achieved by mixing powdered enamel with oil and applying it with a brush to areas of the background design. The background layer is fired before the next layer is applied and an image is built up in this way to form a beautiful picture. Dating to around the end of the 15th / beginning of the 16th century, this method has led to some most beautiful miniature works of art.

Champlevé (literally means 'raised field') enamel dates back to around the 12th century and differs from cloisonné in that no wires are used to form the design, instead the design or pattern is set in low relief on the object, in other words, on buttons the pattern or design is likely to be moulded in the manufacturing process before the enamel is applied. The design is often finished off to make the edges sharp before the enamel is filled in and fired, afterwards being filed or planed to the level of the metal design edges.

In the photo to the right (above) you can see a range of enamel buttons on various metal bases. Below is a glass button trying to pretend to be enamel. Much of the paint has worn off this button over the century or so since it was made but enough remains for us to guess at its former beauty.

Solid silver buttons

Here is where you will find my oldest accurately datable buttons.

Silver buttons are not always fully hallmarked but those from Great Britain usually bear a full hallmark giving the date letter for the item. Some very small silver items are not fully hallmarked being below the weight for which this is required and imported buttons are often found to have a simple 925 mark to indicate the quality of silver the contain. Continental silver is frequently of a lesser quality than 'English' silver and may bear no mark at all.

Here I have a mix of fully marked, partially marked and unmarked silver buttons, the set of six are German and probably 800 silver but my favourites are the smallest (which also live in the matchbox) and they date from 1865.

These little floral buttons are just over half an inch long and very light in weight. On the reverse, the hallmark displays the young Victoria head, the maker's mark and the date letter for 1865.

The rest of my hallmarked silver buttons date to around 1900 - 1910.

Glass buttons

Glass buttons come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny floral buttons to large abstract forms, and in every colour imaginable. All the buttons in the pictures to the right and below are made of glass.

Black glass buttons are very common from the end of the Victorian era, when the Queen was in mourning. Fashion followed her lead. Also from around the Victorian era you can find black glass buttons with a silvered coating which mimic the cut steel buttons of court dress in a slightly earlier era. I have several of this type of glass button.

Most of my glass buttons have a lustre finish, several having what I would describe as 'carnival' lustre, ie changing colour according to the angle of the light.

You will find an enormous variety of glass buttons from the 19th and 20th centuries have survived well in button boxes throughout the World. Granny knew what she was doing, saving all those buttons for the futuure.

I've placed a dime in the photograph above so that you can get an idea of size. For those in the UK, a dime is about the same size as a 5p piece.

This very sweet little button (half an inch diameter) is a paperweight type button. It isn't very easy to see, but the little coloured glass flowers are inside the solid dome of glass. What a wonderful collection could be made of just this type of button.

A 21st Birthday Gift?

In Victorian times and through into the early 20th century, a young lady might receive a set of buttons as a 21st birthday present. Usually the set of six would be beautifully presented in a velvet lined box and the best would be a set of solid silver buttons, sometimes with matching hat pins or matching brooch.

The set shown here has long since lost its presentation box and would not have been appropriate for the more well-off young lady as they are actually copper, enamelled and thinly silver plated. They are, neverthless, a lovely set which any young woman of less than posh status would have been delighted to receive.

Each has an eight paste (diamante) stone setting and the design is in a shape which reminds us of the swastika. In its original connotations the swastika is an ancient symbol of good luck and wellbeing and was popular in the early 20th century before the Nazi party adopted it as a symbol. I would place the period these buttons date to at 1920 or earlier.

Realistics

Always popular with collectors, this kind of button is referred to as a 'realistic'. It's a little apple in early plastic, perhaps bakelite, with a brass loop shank embedded in the back. Sadly, there is no maker's name but the button is probably too small, at roughly half an inch, to carry a maker's mark.

There are many realistics to be found, flowers, fruit, vegetables, dog's heads, almost any subject you can imagine.

These were not buttons made for children, these were made for use by adults on clothing. Children's buttons didn't really come along until mass production of cheap plastics, prior to that children were basically dressed like small adults, yet the variety and number availble of realistic buttons shows they were undoubtedly popular.

Austrian Tinies and other dimis

Very small buttons, Austrian tinies were not just made in Austria but wherever they are from, they share certain characteristics.

Each is made up of various layers (usually three) of materials to form the decoration, all held in place by the rim of the button, with a japanned back and a metal shank. All Austrian tinies measure three eighths of an inch in diameter (1 centimetre). They were made in the late 19th / early 20th centuries.

Above are two sets of Austrian tinies, one with velvet behind flowers, the other with a scrolling design (largely worn) surrounding a central faceted steel.

The two sets above are diminutive buttons which, although similar in size to Austrian tinies, nevertheless are not made in the same way. The agate lookalike is probably glass.

The button box

... and other collectable buttons

The monkeys to the left are all of carved ivory and a rare find, dating from the end of the 19th century.

These would have been hand made in Japan and came in various sizes with portraits of animals such as tigers, lions etc carved into the surface of the button. The shank is an integral part of the button, carved into the ivory.

You can clearly see the grain of the ivory in the photograph although this is even more pronounced on the backs of the buttons. Once carved, dye is applied to make the features stand out. You will see that two of these buttons are very similar but not identical, each button being meticulously hand made, there could never be two identical.

The purple velvet buttons came from an Edwardian dress and are also individually hand made but use a steel frame over which the fabric is stretched and a steel disc, also velvet covered, is fitted into the back of the button to hold everything in place. As you can perhaps see, there is no shank on these buttons, the seamstress would simply have stitched neatly through the back of the button to attach them to the dress.

The Arts and Crafts style buttons aboove are very small and may well be hand made although 'hand finished' may be more applicable in this case. Many buttons were produced from late 19th century through the 20th century which are highly decorative but not entirely practical. Can you imagine trying to keep a line of these buttons facing the same way on a garment? The chances are they would end up at various jaunty angles and not in the perfect alignment desired.

Above are three buttons in different materials. The top one (next to the dime) is lightweight brass with a brass design sitting on a card backing. Often buttons were made which were never intended to be washed and, although we would never think of doing so now, if the garment was to be washed then the buttons would be removed and restitched on again after the garment had been laundered. The button at the bottom of this photograph has a celluloid centre with brass rim, again, not really a button I would want to wash. These speak of a time when the lady of the house probably had servants to perform these tasks for her ... equally a time when clothing was not laundered as often as it would be now. The third button is brass with a floral design and would have discoloured over time so would either have been polished while a garment was laundered or while on the garment using a slide plate protector between the button and the fabric.

Above are inlaid horn buttons in a variety of styles, Victorian and into the 20th century. These would also have to have been removed from garments for laundry purposes and this can be a guide to age. Inlaid with silver and mother of pearl, they would be easily damaged. In the matchbox back at the beginning of this lens you'll also find a horn button, it's the one with the crane and is inlaid with white and yellow metals and tiny Mother of Pearl chips.

Here are two ceramic buttons, clearly hand made and certainly not suitable for any item you would simply chuck in a washing machine. Not from the modern era then. Neither is the Bimini button (large coppery coloured glass) suitable for use on anything you would throw in a washing machine. Bimini buttons have a brass back plate with the distinctive little tree in a pot stamp and 'made in England', so are instantly recognisable.

Again, these shell / Mother of Pearl buttons are hand made and this can be clearly see on the reverse where the original, dull surface of the shell still exists in places. The smaller buttons in this group are the ones you will most frequently find, the larger four are huge for this type of button. These have little brass shanks, except for the central moon which has a self shank.

Particularly in the post war period of the late 20th century, many firms started to make their own buttons with their brand name on the front such as the one shown above. Industrial methods of mass production really took off after WWII and buttons became available at very cheap prices, particularly those plainer buttons for everyday use. Our habits and ways of dressing changed in the second half of the 20th century, women didn't want to be tied to the home making and mending and with the spread of gadgets to aid the housewife - such as washing machines etc - the modern woman had more time to do as she pleased and pursue her own ambitions. It may have taken fifty years for the dream of equality with men to be realised (although it seems to have bypassed some parts of the planet) but woman is no longer tied to the kitchen most of her day while the rest is spent mending and making.

Two similar yet rather different buttons in the style of netsuke or ojime. Both of the above have stitching holes in the back which could just as easily be used as cord holes but they are a type of button the large one is made in resin and the small one is hand carved in boxwood.

Buttons I have not collected

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