Button Porn

If you've been following my blog for a while, you might remember that my Mom passed away over seven years ago in 2008.  Since then my Dad has continued to live in Naples, Florida...a place that has grown very dear to us since my parents moved there almost twenty years ago.

That phase of our life is closing as all of the friends that my father had in Naples have either died or moved away.  Rather than live alone, it's time for him to move back home to Baltimore to be with his family and friends here.  So Jim and I just returned from a trip to Florida where we began the process of helping Dad to get his house ready to sell.

Though we did a lot of work while we were there, we found time to have a little fun.  Well, for me...a LOT of fun.

That's because we had read about a flea market early last Saturday morning and decided to wake up to get there when it first opened.  When the alarm clock sounded, Jim moaned and started to beg off the whole venture.  Not me.  I was determined to go.  "Well, I'm going", I said, and I threw back the covers and leapt out of bed.  He groaned again but followed me out...what a love.  My Dad was up and came too.

Poor blokes.  They didn't find much except for newspapers and coffee.

But me?  Well, I never made it past the first stall.

It happened to be run by Silvia, a seventy year old woman whose 1988 four-door sedan had one dusty box of buttons after another.

Honestly, I couldn't believe my luck.  SOOO many beautiful buttons...



 And all for 50 cents to one dollar apiece she said.

Sorry I have no picture of the stall...it was too early and I didn't even think to bring a camera.  If I had known the treasure hoard I was going to encounter, I would have saved my pennies and arrived before dawn with an entire news crew!

Next to Silvia's tables, I was lucky to find these two little brass mirrored boxes for five bucks so I had something to hold my choices.



They cleaned up beautifully when I got home.  And so did the buttons.  I loved washing them in a bowl of soapy water and brushing them with Jack's old baby tooth brush.

There were so many buttons at Silvia's stall that I had no choice but to focus my efforts.  I didn't have a ton of money or time, so I went for my one of my current loves...smokey gray carved mother of pearl...



*sigh*

They were all so lovely that I was inspired to photograph them by families.  I just couldn't resist.   I should have been embroidering the last six goldwork honeysuckle leaves on my Japanese embroidery sake ladle but the buttons were far more seductive.

This group of celluloid and metal against a vintage piece of beaded net just makes me swoon...



And these steels, metals and glass stand up better when paired with an old embroidered shoe fragment...



And oh...the astounding beauty of pearly white, carved mother of pearl...



See.  You wouldn't have done your Japanese embroidery either.

Jim was happy to have a task so he dug through all the pearl buttons to pull this collection together...



They are all over 1.25 inches and I plan to send them to my friend Gerry of Older Rose who paints them with the most lovely birds, bees, flowers and cottages and sells them in her Etsy shop.

She even paints haunted houses on the smokey gray pearls.  Makes me want to do a Halloween block.

And speaking of Halloween...

She had two HUGE wooden boxes of just butterscotch bakelite!  But I just ran out of time...

Probably my greatest pleasure was discovering the quaint charm of buffed celluloid.  

Buffed celluloid is a plastic button popular in the 1930s.  I only own a couple so when I saw them all together in a big wooden box, I couldn't resist purchasing enough of them to make an instant collection...

When Silvia saw the caliber of gems that I had pulled from her hoard, the price per button jumped up a bit.  That was OK with me.  It was still a phenomenal deal.  She says that she had a great day because of me...sometimes she only sells a button here or a button there.  As if on cue, an older gentleman walked up and bought one button to put on his pants.  I told Silvia she should be selling them online but she says she's too old to start all that now.  She didn't even know what Etsy was.  Sorry folks, I tried.

Today I am back to the Japanese embroidery frame. I'll update my progress there next time. Thanks to all of you for stopping by and commenting on my Winter Wonderbird last post. It was the perfect welcome party.   It feels good to be home.