Button Bytes Light

The button on the left is "A bear's gamb, erased, holding a rose barbed and slipped over a torse (or wreath)" or, in common parlance, "A bear's foreleg, torn off, holding a rose with leaves and stem over the colors." On the right is a sight straight out of an old English Christmas carol... "A boar's head, as I understand, is the rarest dish in all the land!" It's a boar head, couped (cut off smoothly, as opposed to leaving jagged edges at the bottom).

The word livery is now used to refer to the suit of clothes worn by menservants in the colors of the master who provides it and for whom they work. Although the term "menservants" is archaic, these employees are not necessarily commoners, but may also include members of the aristocracy. For example, a young boy from a wealthy family may be a page boy to a lord, in which case he would wear his master's livery in the same way anyone serving in the Royal Household would wear the Queen’s Livery (that is, both the appropriate colors AND the correct buttons!). So from stable boy through coachmen, grooms, footmen, page boys and so on, each would wear his master's livery. The master would not normally wear livery although he might well have items such as cufflinks, rings and so forth with his seal or coat of arms, and the Scottish clans have badges of certain types which can only be worn by the head of the clan.

The button on the left is one of a million lions! It is "a lion passant, gorged, regaurdant, over a wreath of colors." On the right is one of my favorites, a Greyhound's head, couped.

The retainers wore a livery badge or household badge, but strangely this was not used for livery buttons (except in very few cases) but instead the heraldic crest was put on the buttons. The crest was originally the decoration which knights wore on top of their helmets. This, together with their heraldic colors, served a very functional purpose -- it enabled friend and foe to recognize each other in battle, rather essential in mediaeval warfare. All the suits of livery from the later years had buttons with the master crest which would be made up of a torse (a rope like strand which originally was wound round the helm) or a chapeau (hat or coronet). The coronet can now only be used when officially granted, but in earlier times people wishing to impress would frequently add a crown to which they were not entitled. The buttons may also have a helm or helmet and sometimes a complete coat of arms with human or usually animal figures on either side of the cost of arms, called supporters. These are often the arms of cities, towns or companies.

On the left is a more unusual double crest. On the right, a horse is over a Duke's crown, one of the various crowns used as an alternate to a wreath of colors.

All crest buttons are livery buttons, but not all liveries are crests! Other livery buttons include initials, for example. The difference is that the crest buttons must have the torse or crown on the bottom, and the initials buttons do not. People working for a city would have the appropriate button, but as they were not a family crest button, they would only qualify as a livery button, not as a crest in competition. The torse or one of a variety of caps, coronets, or crowns must be at the bottom of a crest button.

On the left a more unusual subject for a crest button, an inantimate object, in this case a horseshoe. On the right, "A demi-wolf with a motto in a garter belt around."

Liveries began being used by various companies around the 1300’s and were used by guilds of craftsmen and workmen. There are about 95 City of London livery companies still in existence, their charters dating from 1326 to 1986 and ranging from goldsmiths to airline pilots. Livery buttons generally date from the late 18th Century onwards with the vast majority falling into the 1800-1861 period.

Early buttons tend to be flat, one piece and engraved, usually silver or Sheffield plate (silver on copper, electroplating was not introduced until 1840) or occasionally tombac. The writing on the backmark of the earlier liveries generally stands up on the back, that is, it is not engraved into the back. Over time, the buttons became convex, then two piece, and were found in brass and sometimes mother of pearl, and even horn, with black horn and blackened metal buttons used when the household was in mourning. Because of their roots in heraldry, identifying livery buttons can be extremely difficult and frequently impossible. The language of heraldry is archaic and its laws very strict. Reading a description of a coat of arms can be totally confusing. When one matches pictures with buttons, they must be exact -- it is no good finding something vaguely similar -- when you do match up your button you will often find that the crest is shared by up to 20 names.

The buttons can be of the basic sort, initial only, with a crest, with a crest and motto, or as mentioned earlier, with a full coat of arms and supporters. British double and triple crests are unusual but are more commonly seen on European buttons, and ladies who were permitted to create their own liveries, rather than using that of their father or husband, crests which be the most difficult to identify, because they incorporate different family items. These have a diamond shaped design (often with fancy borders) which is called a lozenge.

Even when identifying the families who sported the crest seems impossible, one can appreciate the designs and the workmanship which has gone into producing these buttons, some of which are quite stunning (see the mother of pearl in the BBB for example) and all of which are fascinating and another insight into times past.

Here’s a tip for interested competitors. There is a category for crests, but crests usually sport animals. In competition, if an award is offered for a variety of buttons with a horse, for example, a crest with a horse on it is a real addition to the tray. The good news on these buttons is that the all brass, or silver plated copper buttons, generally go for about $8 - $12 each, though the more elaborate double and triple crests, and the women’s achievements, can go for more. Prices on this type have not shot up from the Big Book of Buttons' prices. For additional information, especially on backmarks, which help one date these fascinating buttons, start with the appendices in BBB, and also the books in the following bibliography.

Bibliography:

As an impressionable youngster, I also read many interesting Civil War period letters recovered from family attics and haylofts. I was also born in the button-making city of Waterbury, CT. The blast of Scovill Manufacturing Cos. power house whistle beckoning workers to the button / brass manufacturing factory buildings sprawled along East Main Street awakened me each morning. After leaving grade school in the afternoon, I sometimes peddled to Scovill's old power house dump on Meriden Road to play baseball. Buttons were occasionally found there among the cinders, and promptly stomped into flat disks by the kids. Interesting people from all the European countries crowded the streets of downtown Waterbury. At night, the distant sound of steam locomotives hauling the freight of Waterbury's brass mills up and down the Naugatuck Valley evoked dreams of traveling to distant places.

Most of my family worked at Scovill's, where Dad was a skilled thread grinder. My favorite uncle, W. Arthur Root, was foreman of Scovill's lacquering department, and my Scottish immigrant father-in-law, William Carew, was drafting room manager. The society of brass workers was a hierarchy, with tool and die makers preeminent and sweepers at the bottom. If the men held a worker's talents or craft status in low repute, they contemptuously labeled him a "shoemaker." Many blue collar parents sacrificed their entire working lives to educate offspring at distant colleges so that they could avoid poor working conditions at the brass mills. I was fortunate to attend the University of Connecticut and Cornell University after leaving high school and later worked as a scientist with the space program and developing computer technology at IBM.

I have always been interested in military history since my family served in military units raised in Waterbury and surrounding communities. For instance, my great, great-grandfather, Hiram Turner Coley of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, was on the battlefield at Winchester, VA with Sheridan's Army in 1864. During the latter part of this brawl, combative Col. Ranald McKenzie of the 2nd rode his horse back and forth in front of the regiment, taunting the Confederates to shoot him. Although his bravado undoubtedly impressed superior officers, it caused many casualties in the ranks. A soldier later wrote to my great, great-grandmother, "Hiram was killed while lying between two friends in a trench. He rose up up to shoot, a ball pierced his head, and he fell back lifeless." Hiram's son, my great-grandfather, Elbert Eugene Coley, never knew his father, and his destitute mother placed him on the farm of Frederick Byron of Watertown during the 1870s. Elbert recounted to me how he lived in a farmhouse attic, and labored long hours in rocky fields. After reaching his mid-teens, he left the Byron farm to work at the button-making firm of Benedict & Burnham. As I recalled those ties to Waterbury, her workers I decided to draft a chronicle of 18th and 19th century button manufacturers and the soldiers who wore their beautifully designed and executed specimens.

Last year I had a very invasive operation for cancer and the task of finishing the book became very difficult. However, the book is finally finished, and my health is nearly restored. A copy of the book can be purchased from me by writing to:

Swirlback Buttons -- One Type of Charm-String Glass... by Micki Kasow

Charm string glass. It’s said, or written, often, yet it’s more complicated than the common explanation of, "Oh, you know, it’s that old glass with the tiny metal shank." There are a variety of types of older glass buttons, and one of the most common, and delightfully varied, is the swirlback glass button.

At a recent meeting of the Black-Eyed Susan Button Club of Maryland, member Nancy Fink, a long-time afficionada of these buttons who know her glass, as well as the history and how it was made, gave a presentation on these fascinating little treasures. This is a summary of her first talk, about swirlbacks.

Swirlbacks were made roughly between 1840-1860 in a production setting -- not as a studio glassmaker might today, but in a factory. The molten glass was dolloped into mold after mold after mold, with the glass handler twisting the rod to release the glass so that he could move onto the next mold. It was that twist that produced the swirl. Someone came right behind him and inserted a small thin U-shaped wire into the still-hot glass, and that was repeated hundreds or thousands of times a day.

Because this was a production operation, the design had to be simple, fast and easy to duplicate. There are several types of decoration common on swirlbacks, most falling under the general category of overlay trim: a simple, wide circle on the top of a small dome; another similar on a different shape; a very small addition of color on the very tip of a cone shape. There are a variety of bands, in lots of permutations. A circle of color on top with bands, and a multitude of variety of patterns of tiny dots. There were also other shapes besides domes and cones. A personal favorite, because it’s both cute and has an amusing name is the "pudding mold."

Some swirlbacks have two colors: some with different colors swirled, like end-of-day glass, some with the color layered (two colors, one beside the other; in other words, a thin layer of glass was formed in a thin sheet in the mold [probably blown?], and another color was used to fill the mold.

Do pay attention to the layer in which the shank is placed. If the layer where the shank was inserted is pink, for example, it is a pink button, if black, then it’s a black button. The evident color, the color on the outside, is trim.

What kind of clothes were these buttons used on? Most likely, these were used as decoration, not as fasteners on women’s clothes. The shanks on these buttons probably would not have stood up to hard use -- the wire is very thin. It is thought that collars, whole bodices, sleeves, cuffs were decorated with many of these little buttons at a time, largely on the dresses of middle class and upper class women.

One piece of good news about these buttons: the prices generally range from 50 cents to $2-3, depending on color, decoration, shape.

There is not a great deal of literature available on these buttons. There is a chapter on all kinds of glass, and some wonderful pictures of old glass, in Buttons: The Collector’s Guide to Selecting, Restoring, and Enjoying New and Vintage Buttons, by Nancy Fink and Maryalice Ditzler. The Big Book of Buttons, by Elizabeth Hughes and Marion Lester, has wonderful pictures of some of this glass, particularly different shapes and decorations, scattered in with other types of old glass, on Plate 37. Debra Wisniewski, in her Antique & Collectible Buttons, Identification & Values, has some examples on pages 38 and 40. Patricia Osborne in both Button Button (p. 93) and About Buttons. Most of the older books that I have currently available to me are either totally silent or very quiet on the subject.

This is likely because earlier collectors were more interested in the more elaborate (to them!) picture buttons, which are more easily labeled. The variety of swirlbacks is amazing! Every collector probably has at least one in a collection. A quick tip for the mounted ones? Just look on the back for a TINY wire shank. It’s probably a swirlback!

(Not to mention the history of the charm string itself, which is very romantic and should be the subject of a separate article. (Actually, it is -- see Lady’s Gallery, Vol. IV, Issue 5, p.56, "Lady Gabrielle with a Past" but someone should also do one here, where it’s more accessible. Hint, hint.)

Articles

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