There’s a convention in town—and it’s brought people to Springfield from all over the world. They’re people who share a common interest: buttons—not political ones but the kind used to fasten clothing. KSMU’s Michele Skalicky attended the National Button Society’s Convention to learn why buttons are the collectible of choice for so many.
Walk into the University Plaza Convention Center’s exhibit hall and you’ll quickly realize why people become fascinated with buttons. There’s an immense variety—from beautiful black glass buttons used in the Victorian era to buttons with tiny mosaics beneath a celluloid dome. It’s fascinating to browse through the displays and walk amongst the vendors.
The convention has brought more than 300 people to Springfield from places as far away as Italy, France and New Zealand.
They’re here to add to their collections and to meet old friends who share a common interest.
Jerry DeHay is here from Texas and helps the 76-year-old National Button Society with publicity. But he’s an avid collector, too, along with his wife—in fact, she got him started. One of his favorite things about the hobby is the chance to dig up history.
"I'll have people contact me frequently with buttons that they don't know what it is. I love to get into a quest of finding out what this button is and how it was used," he said.
Buttons at the show range from a few cents to thousands of dollars at 55 dealer tables that fill up the exhibit hall.
One exhibitor is Lisa Schulz from Wisconsin--the National Button Society’s president. She started collecting buttons from the button boxes of people she knew when she was nine, but she put her hobby aside until she learned about the society in the 80s. Today she has too many to count.
Her favorites are the realistic shapes.
"So that if it's a button of, say, a car, the button is actually shaped like the car," she said.
She also likes specialty glass and Burrwood buttons—a wood composition made by the Burrwood Company in Michigan.
She says people collect for different reasons.
"Most people collect, I think, because of the art and the history. You know, if somebody is really into art they can find very artistic buttons. If they're into history of the button, they can find history of military buttons," she said.
The National Button Society has more than 2500 members. One of them is Raney Gilliland of Kansas who says he and his wife have been collecting all of their married lives. He loves collecting in part because of the people he gets to meet, but also:
"It's really intellectually stimulating because there are so many people who focus in on just specific things, and they are so knowledgeable about manufacturers and why they were in business and why, perhaps, they got out of business and when they were made and where they were made and how they were made," he said.
The fascination with buttons goes back many years—DeHay says. Not only were buttons used for practical purposes, they were also used to decorate clothing. According to DeHay, the button industry in England was the biggest industry in the late 17th century and was the first one to be regulated--that’s because buttons were gold plated and were marked as gilt, double gilt and treble gilt. The government established standards and tested the buttons to make sure they met those standards.
You can learn more about buttons by attending the National Button Society’s Convention—it’s open tomorrow (8/16) from 10 to 2:30, and admission is $7.
You can also find more information on their website: nationalbuttonsociety.org.
