Museum Monday / 4

This week's Museum Monday is a bit delayed (Internet trouble!) - we hope you all had a wonderful start to the week. Today we are sharing buttons from the museum that are actually still on the clothing! This black lambs wool coat is circa 1900 and in amazingly perfect condition. The large buttons adorning it are called Chinese Dragon Slayer Buttons. While this sounds intimidating, it's not meant to be, as the dragon is considered a 'benevolent creature' in these depictions. Made of stamped brass, they are then tinted and pierced and mounted over a woven cellulose background. What may be even more amazing than the buttons is the size of the coat - they were certainly a little smaller back then!

[caption id="attachment_1214" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Hughes, Elizabeth, and Marion Lester. The Big Book of Buttons: The Encyclopedia of Button History, Design, and Identification. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Haworth, NJ: St. Johann, 2010. Print."][/caption]