Read Buttons Online

Authors: Alan Meredith

Tags: #Buttons

Buttons (7 page)

Late-nineteenth-century buttons with celluloid used as decoration, mounted in metal: (top) diamante centre, plated back; (middle) painted glass insets in flower shape, japanned back; (bottom) painted glass centre, japanned back.

Ceramic buttons. Original sales cards of Ruskin and Moorcroft.

Ceramic buttons, marked ‘Mintons’, hand-painted.

Bone buttons: (top) carved with a self-shank; (middle left) sew-through; (middle right) overall button with pin shank; (bottom) carved bone with inset metal loop shank.

Ceramic
buttons, because of their very fragile nature, have not survived in great numbers but were made throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the eighteenth century Josiah Wedgwood made medallions for which mounts were made by Matthew Boulton to create superb dandy buttons. Coalport and Minton, amongst others, made ceramic buttons in the nineteenth century. The art potteries of the twentieth century, such as Moorcroft, Barum and Ruskin, included buttons in their production. Few ceramic buttons are marked, so attribution is difficult. Through the years, porcelain companies produced blanks for individual decoration by hobbyists or by their own employees to earn a little extra. These may carry the artist’s monogram but will have no company name. Quantities of china sew-throughs were made in the nineteenth century, some with painted or transfer decoration that came off when washed. Worcester China, then named Chamberlain & Company, made them between 1840 and 1850. Finely decorated ceramic buttons with the typical Satsuma style of painting and the crackle glaze were amongst the artwork exported from Japan in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Ceramic buttons, unmarked, hand-painted, probably nineteenth-century.

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Satsuma buttons, hand-painted.

Late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century cinnabar buttons.

Cinnabar,
a mineral form of mercury sulphide from which mercury is obtained, was originally used as a colourant for clay forming a medium for carving. Hence items of such appearance are termed ‘cinnabar’. Buttons have been made from a dyed putty mounted on wood or metal and carved in relief.

A selection of cloth-covered buttons. (Top row, left to right) Damask-covered with metal back and soft shank; hand-painted butterfly on silk-covered wooden mould; cord-covered with metal back, a style much used on fur coats from the 1930s onwards. (Middle row, left to right) Handworked lace over linen cloth covering a wooden mould; hand-crocheted in 1980 from a pattern dated 1915 using a very fine steel hook from the period; the four small buttons surrounding are machine-made, with metal beads covering a mould with a metal loop shank; beadwork on cloth-covered wooden mould. (Bottom row, left to right) Painted metal over woven silk with cut steel trim; diamante, sequins and metal beads on silk over wooden core with metal shank, known as passementerie work; basic wooden mould.

Twentieth-century coconut buttons, part of the souvenir trade from tropical regions.

Eighteenth-century dandy button, hand-painted background scene, covered in reverse-painted glass, mounted in copper.

Guinness buttons, reverse-painted, impressed domes of glass, mounted in brass. These buttons were distributed to landlords to wear at the bar to advertise Guinness in the early 1950s.

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