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Button Wednesday : Mother of Pearl

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I came across the following picture on Flickr; it's a giant button made of tiny mother of pearl buttons.

(weisserstier)

Looking further I found out that it was part of an exhibition about 100 years of mother of pearl production in Austria (Stift Geras 2009). I had no idea that there was such a thing as a mother of pearl industry in Austria, a country without any sea coast .... 

(Gutes aus meiner Region)

The production started with shells from the rivers Thaya and March, which were gathered in great quantities by the farmers when straightening brooks. The shell meat was given to the Swine, and the shells were made into buttons and other decorations.

(all pictures from weisserstier)


They had also the old and new production machines in the exhibition. How I wish I had known about this exhibition in time. I would love to see how these buttons were made ! But I found out that I can visit the fabric, so I plan a trip to Austria :)

(all pictures from weisserstier)

Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

Button Wednesday : Tagua Nuts

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Today I want to show you some of my favorite buttons; buttons made of tagua nuts, corozo nuts or Steinnuss in German (literally translated: stone nuts). They were very popular in the 1920s as ordinary clothing buttons, but also as little gems. Tagua nuts come from ivory palms, ivory-nut palms or tagua palms in South America; their scientific name Phytelephas means "plant elephant". This and the first two of the common names refer to the very hard white endosperm of their seeds (the tagua nuts), which resembles elephant ivory, both in color as in structure. That's why its material is also often called vegetable ivory. The nuts are as large as a small avocado, about 4-8 cm in diameter. When dried out, the nuts can be carved just like elephant ivory; they were used for beads, buttons, figurines, jewelry, bagpipes, chess pieces, netsukes, etc. And they can be dyed in all possible colors. The nuts came often to Europe as ballast on ships sailing back from America to Europe without cargo. Hamburg in Germany was, for example, a "tagua nut harbour" and the Steinnuss buttons were made in industries all over Germany. They were used on German military uniforms because of their durability.




(Pictures from LeeValley and ColombiArte)


I found some great pictures of some beautiful vintage tagua buttons; so here we go (all from VintageButtons.net).







However, the plastics took over from the tagua nuts after WWII, being cheaper to produce. But the funny thing is that the tagua nut buttons are back ! In the present time of ecosystems and environmental concerns, the tagua nuts are helping to save the elephants from extinction and the rainforests from deforestation. And it provides work to thousands of people in some poor parts of South America. So lots of eco-friendly modern fashion industries have started to work with tagua nut buttons again !








(Pictures from Nature Beads, Keetsa, and rave fabricare)




Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

Button Wednesday : Flapper Buttons

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


A "flapper" was a term applied in the 1920s to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms (Wikipedia).

So, what do flappers have to do with buttons ?

Flapper dresses were straight and loose, leaving the arms bare (sometimes no straps at all) and dropping the waistline to the hips. Silk or rayon stockings were held up by garters. Skirts rose to just below the knee by 1927, allowing flashes of leg to be seen when a girl danced or walked through a breeze, although the way they danced made any long loose skirt flap up to show their legs. So, they often wore flirty buttons attached to their garters. Such buttons had often flapper faces like the famous cartoon character Betty Boop.

I found some old and new Flapper Buttons; so here we go.















(Pictures are from LuLu's Vintage (2x), Helen Morgan, Christina Bachman from buttonfun, Habadash, Adam Venture, and McArt)



Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

Button Wednesday : Augusto Esquivel

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


BUTTON ART with a big A of Augusto Esquivel. He says: I realize how insignificant and small a simple sewing button can be as it lays in my grandmother’s sewing box, but at the same time how unique and precious it can become as part of a work of art. Like an atom in a molecule, each button serves and shapes the whole. I hold the button to my ear and it whispers to me, “I want to be…..”

No more words needed, his art says it all !












(Pictures from CollabCubed, SunSentinel and Augusto Esquivel)



Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

Button Wednesday : Food

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


When I was looking for buttons made for Elsa Schiaparelli, I also found buttons made from "food". Most of them were made in the 1930s by Lucien Weingott in Paris, on a corner of his kitchen table. He used the most unusual materials to create buttons with texture, in a time where the more usual "expensive" materials were scarce. He included the food elements in Rhodoïd, a kind of plastic made from cellulose, transparent and fireproof. Here some pictures from his creations (from the book "Buttons" by Loïc Allio, Seuil 2001): maize, anise, egg shell, buckwheat and sunflower seeds, respectively.








This process was rejuvenated by "on aura tout vu" in 1996 with their peppercorn buttons (from the book "Buttons" by Loïc Allio, Seuil 2001):



And I found these handmade cake sprinkle buttons from Shpangle to top it off !




Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

Button Wednesday : Buttons for Elsa

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Elsa, who was Elsa ? Elsa Schiaparelli was an extravagant Italian fashion designer in the 1920's and 1930's in Paris. Schiaparelli was very innovative and she had a lot of "firsts" in the fashion industry. Her career began with her introduction of graphic knitwear, this led to her fanciful fabric prints of body parts, food, and many more unusual themes. She was the first to use brightly colored zippers and also the first to have them dyed to match the material used in her garments. And she was the first to create and use fanciful buttons that looked more like brooches. They came in the shapes of peanuts, bees, ram’s heads, etc, etc. She worked with famous artists like Dali and Cocteau, and introduced Dada and Surrealism in her creations. Needless to say that I love the buttons that were made for her, and I show you here a pretty selection with some of them (the last picture comes from Pinterest; all others come from the book "Buttons" by Loïc Allio, Seuil 2001).








And two more from the Victorian and Albert Museum:




Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!