People Profiles

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Button Bytes Light Profiles:   LYNDA N. BORDELON, of Port St. Joe, FL

     Lynda Bordelon has been collecting for a long time, and is still in hope of finding a George Washington button, but she’s not too optimistic about getting one for a good buy, she writes. But she’s managed to get some incredible buttons, like her favorite, a medium size, blue and white igloo.

     Since getting serious about her collection about seven years years ago, a variety of buttons have caught her eye. "I started with black glass, (still love it)," she said. "I have started a collection of state seals (need Idaho and Wyoming), I also have a small collection of Railroad uniform buttons. Right now I'm fascinated with Satsumas, and turtles (any kind), picture buttons, waistcoats, moonglows, patriotic, and campaign," to name just a few! Most collectors can relate to the old adage, "One thing leads to another!"

     And like most collectors, Lynda can’t really say why buttons hold such a fascination for her. "Why? That's like asking why you love your child." And her love of buttons has grown by her love of other people, and their appreciation of her, and buttons.

     "My button mentor, Bess Lee, of Apalachicola, FL, discovered that I loved Military and state seal buttons. Just a few months before her death (at 93 years young), she presented me with her copy of Alberts book, and unbelievably generous act. I cannot polish a brass button without remembering her love of buttons and me."

     Most of her several thousand buttons may be non-descript, as she claims, but her husband isn’t. "My husband is as cute as a button, if that counts (as Button-related)."

Button Bytes Light Profiles:   DIANA MCCLURE BAGFORD of Cincinnati, Ohio

     Diana McClure Bagford is not only a collector, but a button maker. As a potter, she and a fellow artist, a jeweler, joined together to form "Mud Metal and Fire" button studio, (see the Links page) and in 1990, she began collecting herself, following a trip to the Ohio Spring Button Show.

     Each new button she adds to her collection is her favorite, she said, but she keeps an eye out for a variety of button types. In addition to trying to buy up all the green glass buttons around, she is also interested in Houses, heads, imitation fabric in black glass and white glass, and celluloid flowers. She’s got no idea how many she has, but there are "way too many to count!!! I think they breed!"

     One of her longtime favorites is "a beautiful, large, white Mother of Pearl button which is just wonderful, beautiful mother of pearl. No embelishment is neaded. Mother Nature did it all," she said.

     She’s still learning about buttons, and remembers that at one of her first button club meetins, some long time members went through her collection and "they found two large, lacy glass buttons which they lovingly put into a little tissue lined box and passed around the club and most oohed and aahed and I was still clueless as to why the attention. I finally started learning about the older buttons."

     She enjoys making the buttons at her studio, since she began working as a potter in the late '70's and made some buttons in the late '80's and then made serious buttons starting January of 1996. But she tries to focus on the pleasure of the buttons, not the chore of making and selling them. "Buttons are a hobby," she said, and gave this advice: "keep it fun."

Button Bytes Light Profiles:   SANDRA LEA WAGNER of Levittown, PA

     Sandee Wagner was a costume jewelry collector and dealer until she found a "Goodyear" backmarked button in a box of jewelry in 1987. "I was so fasinated by the fact that Goodyear (which at that time I only associated with tires) made buttons. After a little research on N.R. Goodyear at the library I was hooked." That button is still her favorite, a decade later.

     "I have completely dropped the costume jewelery business and have delved into buttons head-first." Sandee writes. "My persistence in pursuing buttons has resulted at this time with an antique store that allows me to spend 4 to 5 hours sorting through their jars of buttons in the middle of their floor. I am there enough that they will even leave the shop in my care as they go for lunch or little shopping trips of their own. I guess they knew that they wouldn't be able to drag me away until I was through!"

     She’s also managed to make contacts that most button collector would really envy. "A Senior Citizen's Center in my town calls me once a month to come over and pick a cart of buttons at a time, simply because they have no use for them. I love it."

     Sandee has fallen for the historical aspect of buttons, and bottles, and describes herself as "a part-time archaeologist. "I've been at a site near my home now for about 4 years. I can walk along my site after a rain and pick up porcelain buttons of all sizes."

     "I also seek out foundations of homes that used to exist in the 1700-1800 hundreds and have been pretty lucky in locating. The main reason I do this is because I have found many a glass and porcelain buttons in this manner, along with marbles, rings and clay pipes among many other things. My local newspaper did a feature article on me about my collecting. But my main love is sorting through all the containers of buttons I have and looking for that one rare or special hard to find button."

     All that hunting has made her appreciate a variety of buttons, she said. "I love all of them. Maybe thats why I have hoarded them for 10 years now. Every button of every type. I want them all," she said, and she thinks she’s got about 6,000 buttons.