Buttons by Matthew

amandainvermont

amandainvermont

VFG Member
I recently attended the National Button Society convention in Manchester, NH and finally met Matthew, my online button guru and online friend of many years. He had a booth there selling buttons and he was also a judge for some of the competition. People submit "cards" of buttons in MANY categories ranging from subject matter (Matthew judged elephant buttons) to materials used to age of buttons and more I'm sure ... so many in fact my eyes glazed over and I couldn't take them all in.

Matthew also submitted four cards in the competition and here is one of them. He said the button in the center of the "glass in metal" is one of his oldest buttons and was one of a set probably on a man's waist coat.

He also told me that the hay days of button collecting were the 50's and people would take brooches or other jewelry and turn them into buttons. (I only thought the opposite was the case.) Sometimes collectors are fooled by these "kitchen buttons" and collectors inspect the shanks carefully to make sure they weren't glued on.

76tray.JPG
 
Here are examples of "kitchen buttons" (so called because the women (??!!) would work in the kitchens changing their jewelry into buttons (??!!).

821kitchen.JPG


And then he says this:

These other buttons are more interesting... they are very well painted (to my unartistic eye) miniatures on old pearl buttons. Technically, I guess they would also fall into the category of kitchen jobs, as it was someone's attempt to "fancy up" some plain pearl buttons, but I really like them. They could never be used in competiton, but I enjoy them as is. Actually, I may post the photo on the button board and see if anyone knows who might have painted them. This kind of button is a bit tricky... if you paint an old pearl button and sign and date it on the back, it's a "studio button" and again safe for competition (if studio buttons are allowed in the award you're doing) because there's no attempt to make anyone think it's anything other than a button that's been painted for a collector.

821paint.JPG


And it's a New England covered bridge, isn't it on the right? Do they have those in Europe? I'll be asking Matthew (who lives in France.)
 
Amanda I've never seen a covered bridge like that, on any of my european travels. The closest I have seen is some of the grand old estates (national trust properties mostly now) have an oriental garden or two with some buildings over water, pagoda style.

and I discovered I have some kitchen buttons! I knew they were homemade but I didn't know it was a pasttime.
 
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Matthew tells me he bought the studio buttons on eBay. Considering the white birch trees, the bridge is most likely a New England scene. And he corrected me on my information about his older button.

"The 18th century button with the painted scene under glass would have been on a frock coat, not a waist coat. I've attached a photo to show how they would have been worn. As you can see, there were matching sets of different sizes for frock coats and waist coats. The photo is from the recent expo of Loïc's collection at the museum in Paris."

frock coat w buttons.jpg
 
Was watching the scandalous Lady W last night and the gentlemen are all wearing these waistcoats (1740s) & frockcoats with superb buttons (on the waistcoats only, the garments were clearly repro, they went for plain covered buttons on the frock coats) but I thought the frock coats were not supposed to be fastened, as in the photo above? it certainly looks awkward.
 
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