Eva and I set off for Addison, Texas, last week to find out what the National Button Society Show was all about. Eva joined the other junior members at ten o’clock on Thursday morning to hear the rules of the Amazing Button Race. She sought me out at lunchtime, tired and hungry from a morning of figuring out clues and rushing around the showroom floor. She was so busy that I had time to look at more buttons than I’ve ever seen in one place.
Most of the vendors had buttons on cards, filed by the material the buttons were made of, or the subject of the button. The highest price I saw was $1,400, for an old and beautiful enamel button from France. The least expensive buttons were in poke boxes for 25 cents. A poke box has loose buttons in it, and customers can poke around in hopes of finding just what they want. One of the photos shows a poke box basket made of buttons! We might try to make one like that.
I loved looking at the button competitions. Buttons were attached to stiff paper and grouped into many divisions, according to button materials, manufacturing methods, and pictorial themes. Judges wrote comments on each entry. Sometimes they left the dreaded ‘measle,’ which is a sticky dot, marking a button that does not belong in the tray.
A measled button usually means that the person misidentified the button. In a collection of plastic buttons that were meant to mimic other materials, an entrant labeled one button ‘horn.’ The judge measled the button and wrote, “The measled button really is horn,” not just plastic masquerading as horn.
After two days, Eva had finished the Amazing Button Race, and as a consequence, knew more about buttons than I did! “Oh Mom, look,” she said very casually, “it looks like I got a vegetable ivory button in this bag. And here’s a goofy. Hey, I got a moonglow! Mom, don’t you just love moonglows?”
And a moonglow is… ?
The National Button Society has a great program for juniors. The membership fee for juniors is $2.00, and they receive all of the lovely society journals, just like a grown-up member. And the junior registration fee for the convention is $0. That’s right—it’s free. The lady who organized the Amazing Button Race said, “These kids are the button collectors of the future, and we want to encourage them.”
This old box was on display. It says, “Hand made X-L-NT Crochet Buttons Very Stylish Nicely Assorted.” Old crochet buttons are collectible, too.
