Hard Times and Buttons

A few days ago I sifted through a box of old buttons at my grandmother's house. Most of them belonged to her mother and could have been purchased anytime during the last century. The varying price tags suggested that some were many decades old. They were made in Italy, Holland, Japan, and West Germany; and most had never left the card to which they'd been attached.

My great-grandmother was not an avid seamstress. I believe she did it only out of necessity during hard times. But although I don't remember her doing much sewing when I was little, I do remember the hoards of unused material, buttons, and zippers that filled up her drawers. To me it seemed like an eccentric thing to collect - beautifully patterned material for dresses that were never going to be made, and buttons that would never be sewn to a jacket or blouse.

But as I looked through the box that day, it was astonishing just how beautiful and interesting everything seemed. It suddenly made sense that it was not her odd need for hundreds of unused buttons as much as it was a desire to hold on to things that were beautiful and different. She never could afford real jewelry. She would save her babysitting money and every so often go to the drugstore and buy a broach made of costume jewelry (which would then be wrapped in toilet paper and also hid away in her house).

So maybe the box was her way of having something to treasure, or pass down to a generation that could also discover the beauty of simple buttons.