[/caption]In Susan's search for antique buttons, she's also unearthed some amazing, sometimes funny, often surprising and always interesting facts about buttons. For a quick look at some of her finds recorded in her book, Beautiful Button Jewelry, we've listed the top 10 craziest facts we know about buttons.
If you know an equally funny button fact, we'd love to hear it.
[caption id="attachment_388" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Museum collection of butterfly buttons"]
[/caption]10. Archeologists have discovered button-like objects dating as far back as 2000 BC, which were most likely used more for decoration than for fastening.
9. Button holes were not used in Europe until some 3,500 years after the first buttons.
8. Most costume historians credit the returning Crusaders with bringing the concept of the button back from the Middle East, where it had been in use among the Saracen cultures for some time.
7. In the 18th century, only men sported highly decorated buttons on their frock coats, while women still fastened their gowns with lacing or hooks and eyes.
6. In 1520, King Francis I of France ordered 13,400 buttons from his jewelry, ALL of which were sewn onto a black velveteen suit, which he wore to a meeting with King Henry VIII of England, hoping to form an alliance.
5. Tintypes were made into buttons for tiny, portable keepsakes.
4. In the late 19th century, women's fashions exploded into a riot of ornamental excess and ostentatious display, with buttons participating in this trend with picture buttons (mass-produced in stamped or molded brass and white metal, lifting motifs from every possible source – even flies, spiders and alligators made their way onto buttons)!
[caption id="attachment_387" align="alignright" width="264" caption="Jet buttons made popular by Queen Victoria"]
[/caption]3. Queen Victoria made the Victorian “jet” (mostly made of black glass) button popular during her very extended (42-year) mourning period after Prince Albert died.
2. During the 30's and 40's, Bakelite and Catalin plastic made possible buttons representing all varieties of fruits and vegetables, clothespins, fish, pencils, rulers, blackboards, cigarette packages, horse heads, roosters, and lobsters, to name only a very few designs.
And the absolutely most interesting button fact we know:
1. France's King Louis XIV, the infamous Sun King, reached the zenith of button excess by spending $6 million on buttons during his reign, and $600,000 in one year alone!
And you thought buttons were just for fastening your shirt! Or for making jewelry.
[caption id="attachment_393" align="aligncenter" width="560" caption="Shakespearean Buttons"]
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this realy helped me with homework and this is coming from an eight year old
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