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Button boxes

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Loss

Loss

A COLLECTOR’S FAVOURITE

“I’ve been a collector for over twenty years and own many wonderful historic buttons. But the one I love most is a small blue plastic flower that came from my mother’s sewing box. She kept loose buttons in a butter container.

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“I remember looking at these buttons often as a child. My mother sewed the baskets and leaf buttons on costumes she made for me – but she cut them off when I outgrew them. I now have the butter container and the sweet buttons filled with memories. My favourite is this precious blue flower with its openworked petals.”

HAPPY FAMILIES

“In the early post-war years, toys were scarce and expensive, but there were always household items waiting to entertain. The king of these was the button jar! I would climb up to get it and empty the contents on to the floor, ready for the games to begin.

“One favourite game involved lining up the buttons in order of attractiveness, like a beauty parade. Possibly the best game of all was Families. The large, ugly button was Father, a pretty, medium-sized one was Mother and two tiny pearl buttons twin babies. A once-shiny, now scuffed leather football button would be a big brother and the shiny satin one a big sister. Anthropomorphism was alive and well and living on the kitchen floor!”

PLAYING WITH PLANES

“Like many ‘oldies’, I have a button box and enjoy looking through it. This is one of the buttons that brings back memories. It’s a little aeroplane button left over from a cardigan I knitted for my eldest grandson. He is 16 now!

“It didn’t work really well as the wings were tricky to get through the hole. But he enjoyed the little different coloured aeroplanes. Perhaps my story is not as interesting as others in this project, but that is me: sewing, knitting and grandchildren!”

GOING TO THE HACIENDA

“When I was a kid, we used to go on a road trip to the hacienda, a journey that took many hours.

“I used to sit in the back of the car next to my grandmother and she would always take out a box full of buttons that kept me entertained throughout the trip. I grouped the buttons by colours, dividing them into textures and shapes and groups, and picking out the lonely individuals that had belonged to old clothes. I built them into towers and always had my favourites.

“Now those buttons live at my mother’s house and my own kids play with them, too.”

ROYAL CONNECTIONS

“I found this little blue ‘woggle’ button in my late mother’s button tin. It once belonged to a blue duffle coat that I wore as a threeyear-old. I have a 1959 photograph showing me wearing the coat on a day out in St James’s Park in London, alongside my mother and a family friend, a royal policeman who had ‘looked after’ the Queen (then the Princess Elizabeth) and Princess Margaret when they lived at Clarence House.

“What I particularly remember about that day is falling over and getting my long white socks dirty, and my Mum tying her cotton hankie round my knee!”

WONDER(WEB)WOMAN

“My mother avoided sewing at all costs. When she was forced to pick up needle and thread she could mend a hem in around three long stitches. She must have been one of the first to buy ‘No Sewing’ Wonderweb.

“Her sewing box still smells slightly of cigarettes and there are two lighters in there – one a very fancy Art Deco piece ... and some even fancier buttons!”

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