I called around to the thrift shops yesterday. One thrift shop proprietor said, "we used to get things like that 10 years ago, but no more." I asked my husband whether he thought that meant people didn't keep button boxes and he said he thought that when someone died or went into a nursing home the button box was thrown out as worthless rather than being taken to a thrift shop. In addition to the telephone survey I actually visited about 3 thrift shops yesterday and didn't find any buttons or button boxes although two of them had areas with sewing and craft items. It made me very sad to see someone's stash of cloth and patterns there in the thrift shop. I shipped out the entire contents of my button box to my daughter. I noticed that there was a pink fabric covered button from an Easter coat I had as a child and white shirt buttons on a card that my mother undoubtedly brought from Iowa when she came to New York in the late 1940's. Many of my adult aquisitions seemed to fall into the rhinestone and jewelled category since I spent some time making elaborate Halloween costumes of princesses and such. Also there seemed to be quite a few buttons that looked like animal eyes from toys I made for my daughter and some duck and rabbit shaped buttons from outfits I knitted her when she was young. I thought you could really tell a lot about a person from their button collection, sort of a portrait in buttons. When I got home from the thrift shop tour, though, there was a message from my daugther on the phone and she was saying she wanted 20 buttons from each Area Code. So this seems to be a different kind of art work than what I would have done with the buttons. This is probably just as well. My contacts with friends who I knew to have button boxes had revealed to me that they were very protective of their buttons, willing to part with some, but not all. I had been thinking about the concept of the "edited button box" with sentimental and monetarily valuble buttons removed and whether that would yield a real portrait of a person on buttons. Fortunately she is going for something else. I was beginning to feel like I was asking people to give me their souls when I asked for their button boxes. And yet of course, once you are dead, it would seem that your buttons are worthless! Devon PS I suspect that the "valuble" buttons are mother of pearl and such, but I have never studied the issue.
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