I “inherited” my paternal grandmother’s button collection. It is more of an accumulation than a curated collection. I’ve done something similar over the years. Toss a blouse that’s too worn to wear anymore, but snip off the buttons first because you never know when you might need just that button.

These are milk glass. The first earrings I made. Later, I realized I should have worked the wire through all four holes. Based on how the red buttons above smell when warmed, I suspect they are Bakelite.

I have no idea where all the buttons came from or when she got them. I just know that they are all very old. Grandma was born in 1894 and I acquired her buttons in 1981. Even if she didn’t start collecting buttons until she was 25 years old, that would still make the oldest of them 107 years old. And even if the youngest of them were acquired just before she died, that still makes them something close to 50 years old.

These buttons are plastic and the color changes between kind of gray and copperish depending on the viewing angle. I tried something a little different and mounted them on copper washers.

To be sure, not all her buttons are gems of the button world. But they all have history. They’ve all served a purpose and been repurposed an unknown number of times.

There are plastic buttons and glass ones. There are a lot of mother of pearl buttons (these are mostly shank buttons and I haven’t yet figured out how to make that kind into earrings) and a few wooden ones. I suspect a couple of them are Bakelite. There are metal buttons as well. Some have two holes and some have four. There are quite a few shank style buttons.

These buttons are also plastic. The are a bit translucent and I think are meant to resemble mother of pearl. They have a little wear on top which suggests to me that they were well used.

They’ve sat in the dark in an old coffee tin for a very long time. I decided it was time to let them out into the world again.

So I’m making some of them into earrings. It just seemed natural given that I make jewelry. What I don’t actually understand is why it took me so long to think of doing it.

Last image courtesy of QuoteFancy.