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My
Mum loves antiques, so wherever we go we have to look in all the antique shops.
Sometimes this gets a bit boring, so she suggested I start collecting something
which would give me things to look out for. But the question was, what should
I collect? We thought of many things, for example old postcards or old badges,
but I decided on old buttons because they were cheap and not too big. I soon
discovered that Grandmas were brilliant when it came to buttons, as they tend
to have hoards stored away.
Then
when we were on holiday four years ago in Devon we went into a shop in Totnes
called 'Magpie' where they had a massive chest of drawers full of all sorts
of buttons. Most of them were between 2p and £2, so I could buy quite a lot
of buttons with my pocket money. Now I had to choose which ones to get. I chose
a red plastic button with a painted robin, one in the shape of a red hat with
flowers, leaves and fruit around the edge, one from the 1950s which is covered
in straw with a flower, and many more. I soon discovered that sets of buttons
were expensive, for example £6, so I don't have many sets except the ones which
my relations have given me. I have only a few sets which are from the 1900s
and they include my oldest, which have a mother-of-pearl background with brass
in swirly shapes, and are in the style called Art Nouveau. Another set are from
the 1930s and are of green plastic with a stylish look.
So
far I have 235 buttons made from glass straw, plastic, wood, mother-of-pearl,
brass, material, metal with crystals, silver, amber, bakelite and fake diamonds.
They are in the shape of bows, hats, dogs, flowers, birds, snakes and leaves:
one is imitating a piece of wood, another the skin of a snake. There are also
hearts cubes, domes, cylinders, rectangles and squares. The smallest is of mother-of-pearl,
probably from an item of children's underwear, and measures 6 mm. The largest
is of plastic from the 1950s measuring 5 cm. They are mainly English buttons,
but I do have a Chinese circular brass button with a raised design of flowers
on it which came from a mandarin's dragon robe. You can get buttons with many
different fastenings, for example:
This article was written by Florence Andrews when she was a Young Embroiderer. © Florence Andrews, 1996 - 2011.
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