Cute as a Button Reasons to Become a Button Collector
Tales from (mostly) tiny towns in (mostly) the Midwest
I don’t remember why my husband and I had stopped forty miles north of Interstate 70, our usual route across Ohio. Maybe we were heading home from a B&B in that northeastern corner of the state. Or maybe we were bored with the endless gray ribbon of Interstate 70 spooling through the farmland. Whatever the reason, we parked in the miniscule village of Dover and decided to check out its main (and only) attraction, the Ernest Warthur Museum & Gardens.
Ernest “Mooney” Warthur (1885 – 1973), a Dover native, learned to whittle as a child. He grew up to earn the nickname of “the world’s master carver.” Some of his detailed locomotive replicas boast over 7,500 pieces and built-in motors. He also, with only ten cuts each, carved working miniature pliers. People still talk about the plier tree he carved out of one block of wood. The 511 interlocking pliers were exhibited at the 1933 - 1934 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. Henry Ford tried unsuccessfully to woo him away from Dover to become a living exhibit at Ford’s Greenfield Village. Johnny Carson had him on his show.
In a January 2020 article in Ohio Magazine, Vince Guerrieri declared the Ernest Warthur Museum “serves as a beautiful example of a hobby that got out of control.” I try not to be judgmental.
My husband and I oohed and aahed the craftsmanship as we walked through the Warthur Museum. At one point, we learned Mooney woke up at two in the morning and carved until five before going off to his machine shop job, then found another two hours in the evening to carve his trains. We looked at each other. “Wonder what his wife did?”
We found out. We exited the museum and were faced with a small, neat as a pin, building which held Freida Warthur’s button collection display. Mooney’s wife kept herself busy collecting buttons, sorting buttons, and creating button arrangements. The buttons, placed with the precision of a neurosurgeon, were arrayed into pinwheels, stars, and other geometric figures. Currently about half of the 73,282 buttons in her collection are exhibited.
Which brings me to my point: button collecting might be precisely the perfect hobby for you. Buttons are small. Buttons can be had for not much money. Buttons come in a limitless range of colors and styles. Collecting buttons requires minimal exertion and even less dexterity. It’s not a noisy, or smelly activity, like say, raising droopy-eared Poland China hogs. Surplus buttons can be returned to their intended function or repurposed in fun ways.
Many, if not most, adults are already button collectors. They just don’t know it. We snip off buttons from ruined clothing and tuck them into a jar or old fruitcake container or candy tin. When we die, we pass our button jars down. Few have the nerve to throw out a button jar or box.
Button collectors ferret out Bakelite buttons in yard sales, pearl buttons at estate sales, and Obi dome decorative buttons on tours to Japan.
One remarkable collector was Dalton Stevens, a South Carolina farmer, who came to be known as the Button King. One night in 1983, unable to sleep, he decided to sew buttons on a denim suit. He sewed on a couple, then a few more, and then kept going. Within two months, the suit weighed sixteen pounds and sported 16,333 buttons, but who’s counting? Stevens had found his mission. He went on to decorate guitars, shoes, a car, and two coffins — one for when he passed on and the other to be left as a sample of his button achievements. He opened the Button Stop Museum next to his home which attracted tourists to his tiny town (population 16,000) of Bishopville. Like Mooney Warthur, he appeared on the Johnny Carson Show, but also made it to David Letterman’s. Dalton Stevens, the Button King, died in 2016 at age eighty-six and was buried in one of his button-encrusted caskets, wearing his Button Suit. I wish I had met him and seen his roadside attraction in its full glory.
More than one button collector has turned their hobby into a profession. Deb and Dee Hanson, two artists from the Midwest, own the Hanson Button Barn in Vermont. They sell, appraise, consign, and auction buttons. They also hit the road in the summer to travel the button show circuit.
Grandma’s Buttons in St. Francisville, Louisiana began in 1985 in founder Susan Davis’s bedroom. Ten years later, Susan and her husband bought a historic bank building which now houses Grandma’s Buttons. Their retail space and a small button museum is on the first floor. The museum, with eight wall-mounted display cases, is in the old vault and draws thousands of visitors each year. The second floor holds their offices and jewelry manufacturing studio. A team of twenty-five employees, mostly women, fashion old buttons by hand into exquisite jewelry. Grandma’s Buttons sells over thirty thousand pieces of jewelry annually.
But what do serious button collectors do? They do many of the same things antique car collectors or Pickard china collectors do. They get together to discuss and learn about issues — in person, virtually, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. For button collectors, the National Button Society is their go-to group in the United States for events and information.
Collectors travel to button-oriented sites such as the National Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine, Iowa, the Waterbury Button Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, or the Heck Homestead in Monson, Massachusetts. International wanderers make their way to the museum at the Emaux de Briare mosaic factory. Originally known as Bapterosses & Cie, the manufacturer became the world’s most prolific makers of china buttons and beads.
Perhaps the most unexpected museum with a button collection is the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. When the Steamboat Arabia sank September 5, 1856, in the Missouri River near Kansas City, over two hundred tons of goods intended for the midwestern frontier went under. (The passengers and crew all escaped.) The inadvertent time capsule eventually was covered by silt. By 1988, forty-five feet of dirt and a Kansas cornfield covered the wreck. The Missouri River was long gone, having shifted course as it always does, to a spot a half mile from the wreck. An energetic group of five men and their families decided to unearth it. They succeeded in recovering the largest cache of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world. Liquor, ketchup bottles, jarred fruit, and green pickles which the Museum notes “were still edible.” A person must wonder how this was determined and by what good sport. The wreck also had clothing and, of course, china buttons — calico buttons, a mainstay of the 1800s.
The term “calico” is derived from the name of the town Calcutta in India. The town manufactured a rough, cotton cloth since at least 1100 CE which became known as calico cloth. In the United States, calico cloth refers to this textile which has been decorated with small, usually floral, prints. It became popular in the 1700s. At first, clothing made of calico was decorated with buttons covered with bits of the cloth. By 1840, china buttons decorated with calico fabric-inspired stenciled designs became available. Initially, many were made by Minton in England, using the same process for decoration as was used in Minton transferware china dishes and household items. By the late 1800s, the French Bapterosses company had devised a way to make hundreds of the buttons at one swell swoop.
China buttons come in many shapes, sizes, and configurations. They have names like pie crust, lozenge, tire, dome, two-hole, four-hole, and more. Calico buttons add a range of stencil patterns. Dots, lines, squiggles, and miniature vines were put on in multiple colors. Button collectors, beginning in 1939, attempted to categorize and number them. At least one specialist claims to have found more than the established 327 patterns. Pattern books, Power Points, lectures, and attention has fanned the flames. This has led to hunts to collect a sample button of each pattern, new pattern books, and endless discussions on how to differentiate the placement of tiny triads of dots on small china buttons and other calico button issues.
While I recommend button collecting as a hobby for many, I’d suggest a calico button quest only for folks yearning to get lost in a new, charming, and complex world. As for me, I’m thinking of buying one of those little libraries and transforming it into a button museum for our front yard or maybe the closet in my study…what do you think?
The Indenture of Ivy O’Neill
Not every immigrant sailed willingly to America...
Ivy O'Neill's idyllic childhood ends in disaster in 1690 when red-coated soldiers cross the Celtic Sea to invade Ireland. While the O'Neill family struggles to survive on the Irish coast, George Stokely is building a life in the British Colony of Maryland. All he needs to make his Chesapeake tobacco farm thrive is more help. The Indenture of Ivy O'Neill is an immersive story of courage, the meaning of family, and the transformative power of immigration.
My historical fiction novel’s publication date is June 3, 2022. Learn more at my website. For those who like illustrations, check out my Pinterest board The Indenture of Ivy O’Neill. Thanks to everyone who collaborated with me to bring this story to fruition.