Button Collection

These buttons spans four generations, starting with the “charm string” on the second shelf, which includes a button from a Civil War uniform. Every seamstress saved buttons, even cutting them off work shirts after they wore out. So, as the years went by, button boxes held an accumulation of interesting buttons. Young girls would string pretty buttons made from jet, wood, bone, silver, celluloid, cloisonné, Lucite, even porcelain buttons brought back from a trip to China.