From the Vault: Buttons

By Eilene Lyon

My mom, like her mother before her, did a lot of sewing early in her marriage. One of the last vestiges of those days is her “button box,” which I’ve inherited. I loved rooting around the button collection as a kid. For some reason, I still have a thing about saving extra buttons, even ordinary white ones.

I once bought a shawl-collared, rag wool sweater that had a plastic button molded to look like a woven leather-covered button. Cheesy. Mom had the real thing in her canister and I quickly appropriated one and swapped it out. Cheap sweater now looked a lot classier!

Just the variety of styles is intriguing. Some have two or four small holes for sewing them on. Others have an opening with a bar across the middle. Or there is an eye attached to the back so the stitching remains hidden and the button stands further away from the garment. Great for bulky wool coats and such. Some are riveted, as on jeans. They come in metal, polyester, ceramic, fabric, shell, horn, pearl, plastic, glass, wood, and more.

While we still have button-down shirts and cardigans, other clothing fasteners have eclipsed buttons on many apparel items. Most pants and jackets use zippers, as do dresses. Except for costume purposes, you’re not likely to come across any button-up shoes. Other fasteners include laces, snaps, hooks, and Velcro. Despite that, buttons are far from obsolete.

But what to do with a collection of buttons, many of them singularities? There will be no small children dropping by my house to be amused by them (and their parents would nix that idea as a choking hazard anyway). That leaves me to invent games or devise art projects.

Probably, I’ll just pour them out and look at them from time to time. Call me nostalgic.