For example, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy ordered Venetian glass buttons decorated with pearls, and Francis I of France is said to have ordered a set of black enamel buttons mounted on gold from a Parisian goldsmith. These were obviously special buttons of the same quality as contemporary jewelry. Buttons of any material were generally round in shape and made of decorated metal or covered with needlework in silk or metal threads on a wooden core. The ball-shaped toggle button is probably the type of button that replaced the fibula as a fastening for cloaks, capes, and other outer garments.
A sixteenth-century example exists in Nuremberg hallmarked silver, attached to a thin bar by a flexible chain link. The eighteenth century is considered the Golden Age of buttons by collectors, as the variety of styles, as well as the physical size of buttons increase dramatically.
Men's coats required buttons at the front opening, sleeves, pockets, and back vents. Waistcoats and breeches were also fastened with buttons. The size of the button grows and the shape generally flattens during the course of the century, ending in the flat disk as large as 1. The value of decorations on a man's ensemble during this period, composed of metal thread embroidery and jeweled buttons, could account for as much as 80 percent of the cost of the suit of clothes. Thus, luxurious buttons became an increasingly essential part of the expression of status in upper-class men's dress.
The newly fashionable paste jewels imitation gemstones appeared in the s and were used to create some of the most highly prized buttons of the nineteenth century. As the button evolved from a ball to a flat disk, another notable change in decorative technique was the use of the button as a palette for painting.
Representational images became immensely popular in the second half of the eighteenth century and are related to the miniature portraits that were worn as pendants or pins during the period.
Portraits and subjects like rococo genre scenes, historical events, tourist views, and architectural monuments were produced.
An extraordinary set of French portrait miniature buttons was made about and included portraits of personalities from the French Revolutionary period; each portrait was set in silver with paste-diamond border and the name of the sitter engraved on the back.
Artists of note participated in the production of portrait buttons; Jean-Baptiste Isabey , a miniature painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, records that he painted decorative buttons at the beginning of his career. By the second half of the eighteenth century, button making in Europe fell into two categories: French button production remained a craft tradition allied with other high-quality decorative arts, while the English button industry developed mass-production techniques.
Probably the most influential of the new English technologies was the development of cut-steel buttons and accessories by the steel manufacturer Matthew Bolton of Birmingham in the s. Bolton's cut-steel or faceted steel buttons were one of the most prevalent styles of the last three decades of the eighteenth century. The polished and faceted surface was created to imitate that of faceted gems or glass and the effect was quite successful.
The ceramic manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood began producing buttons made of his popular jasperware in as part of a collaboration with Matthew Bolton, who created cut-steel settings for the ceramic buttons. Jasper-ware ceramics, with their neoclassical motifs derived from cameos, had become the trademark product of the Wedg-wood factory and the buttons were available in five colors and a variety of shapes.
Another innovation in the ceramic industry, that of transfer printing, created a new type of ceramic button decorated with designs derived from copperplate engravings. At the end of the eighteenth century, buttons made from mother-of-pearl began to rival in popularity those of steel. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment sensibility manifested itself in several unique types of buttons.
Faithfully depicted insects and animals became the subject of button sets, as did buttons created from semiprecious materials such as agate, in which the natural patterns of the stones were the only decoration.
The highlight of this natural history trend is probably the so-called Habitat buttons, which contain actual specimens of insects, plants, or pieces of minerals encased under glass domes. The standardization of military uniforms in eighteenth-century Europe led to the production of specialized buttons that continues to be a major portion of the button industry today. The number of buttons required for a soldier's coat could be as many as twenty to thirty. Each country, region, and specialization within the armed services required their own individual designs.
Uniform buttons carried over into civilian life, as modern businesses, such as airlines, and local law enforcement agencies required special buttons for their uniforms. Beginning in the early nineteenth century men's dress became much plainer and less ostentatious. Portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres show men's fashion in the first half of the nineteenth century with plain gold metal or fabric buttons of the same color as the garment on which they are sewn.
Women's bodices and outerwear became the outlet for the display of decorative buttons by the mid-nineteenth century. Women's buttons followed trends in jewelry: colored enamel, porcelain, pearl, silver, and jewels were used.
Jet and black glass, introduced during Queen Victoria's mourning for Prince Albert, remained popular to the end of the century. The nineteenth-century button industry continued along the two lines that had been established in the eighteenth century; industrial progress continued concurrently with handcraft techniques, which generally followed the historical revival styles of nineteenth-century decorative arts.
In , Aaron Benedict established a metal button-making factory in Waterbury, Connecticut, to supply metal buttons for the military. Until that time many metal buttons were still coming from England, but the War of brought trade between the United States and Britain to a halt. These guilds regulated the production of buttons, as well as passed laws regarding their use. Though the buttons of the Middle Ages are already functional, they are still seen as a symbol of prosperity and prestige.
Only those who are rich enough to afford them can be allowed to wear elaborate buttons. The Industrial Revolution helped popularize and democratize buttons. For once, buttons can now be had by the masses and their use are not limited to just the upper classes alone. Buttons can now be mass-produced cheaply. In short, the not-so-humble shirt collar has undergone more permutations — spread, cutaway, point-tabbed, club, pinned, to name a few — than nearly any other garment part: but, perhaps paradoxically, when form emanates from a period-specific function, the results tend to be timeless.
Home Stories Style. Michael Caine wears a button-down shirt with an exaggerated collar roll. Myrqvist for The Rake: An obbligato dress shoe.
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