Victorian button charm string. 02/06/2012
A charm string or memory string was a 19th century pastime which consisted of collecting buttons & other small mementos & stringing them together. Young women of the 1860s-1900s would have parties in which they would exchange buttons & stories associated with them, Rules dictated that buttons couldn't be purchased for the collection & had to be gifts from other collectors, suitors, friends or family. The gift of a button was considered lucky & the stringing of the buttons on a string enhanced good luck. Strings were often left in view of visitors in order to encourage donations as well as conversation starter by serving as a memento & reminder of past events. The string became a physical reminder of the button owner & times associated with that person. Lore has it that girls who collected 999 buttons would meet her true love after adding the 1000th. Other stories claim the addition of the 1000th would doom the girl to spinsterhood. One thousand button strings are rare & most were much smaller. This one has about 150 buttons. Add Comment Ship of Devilment. 09/18/2011
 This design is said to be based on an etching by Peter Fiotner, a Swiss sculptor who lived from 1485-1546. It has winged beasties on a a boat & an oar whose end has a giant bearded devil with horns.   Large figural brass button of Yum-Yum from the widely popular 1885 comic opera The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan. An English fascination for all things Japanese spread through the country as trade between Europe & Japan increased dramatically from the 1860s - 1870s. This is one of my favorite buttons because of the intricate details in the panels of the parasol & on the kimono fabric.        Another great haul of buttons still on their original cards. or just barely still on the card as is the case in the last photo. Top buttons are much more detailed than I'd originally noticed & have an early Art Nouveau floral design over a green background. Gray buttons have a tiny butterfly in the design. bottom card of twinkle buttons with tinting. Pretty Paris buttons. 02/09/2011
      Full cards of unused antique Victorian & Edwardian buttons; a great way to motivate me to create more jewelry. Unused with plant life. 10/23/2010
     Antique buttons with designs of plant life, unused, on their original cards. The top 2 images are of black glass buttons, the others are metal picture buttons. Parisian Ladies, before & after. 09/30/2010
   Nice large picture buttons with a twinkle background. Found in England. Owl get it! Before & after. 08/19/2010
  Before & after a lot of scrubbing with steel wool & brass cleaner.      The Gibson girl was a feminine ideal of the Art Nouveau period created by illustrator Charles Gibson. She was an early standard of beauty, youth & fashion and often portrayed with her hair piled atop her head in order to accent a graceful neck. This card of Parisian buttons was a great find, though they look as if they were attacked by someone who was a bit too heavy handed with the patina. The bottom pictures show a few after they were cleaned. Vibrant. 06/19/2010
 I vended at the Cupertino Cherry Blossom festival in April. There was a lady there who was telling her friend that there was no way that the buttons I use were Victorian. Pardon? The colors were too bright she said. Yes, well that's because I try to purchase as many unused cards of buttons as I can afford. Just because the photos from that era are black & white, doesn't mean that their clothing was too.  | ArchivesFebruary 2012 CategoriesAll |
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