✎ buttons [skrammelWiki]

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"Hanging by a thread" or "A button placket, but they are all different"

Anatolijs Venovcevs, Staff Archaeologist:

//This object is so ubiquitous because it is virtually
unthinkable to live without it and yet, after every major excavation, it has been generally
overlooked. This is the common button.//

A button is considered a small disc or knob sewn on to a garment, to fasten it by being pushed through a slit. 
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Also:

A button is a small device on a piece of electronic equipment which is pressed to operate it.
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For my research I concentrated on the garment button.

The invention of the button is credited to the Indus Valley civilization (today North India and Pakistan) around 5000 years ago. Fixed through a loop at the back it was sewn onto garments to communicate wealth.

This is the oldest one that was found:
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I chose to divide the buttons by [[materials]], which then is closely linked to their date and the garment they were meant for.

There are different [[typologies/shapes of buttons]], you can find them on the linked page. They also differ in the amount of holes, you can find it [[here]]

//Until the Victorian era a large quantity of buttons was seen as a status symbol (Ferris
1986:98)//

Unlike today, buttons were bought and sold separately from the garment they were attached with.
I like that thought. We all enjoy the advantages of pret-a-porter clothing, but sometimes they just do not fit. Use additional buttons as a tool to make them fit!
  
  Possible Workshops:

1)  
  * Everyone brings a garment that does not fit the way you like it. 
  * Place one or many of provided buttons additionally on the garment.
  * Fit a new buttonhole.
  * You will walk home with your new tailor-made piece.

2)
  * You also bring a piece of scrap material of your liking.
  * We will learn to make a button from it.

3) 
  * Bring a garment with buttons
  * detach all buttons apart from one
  * Buttons are interchanged between participants and reattached

What can I contribute to the school:
  * Button collection/ order system for free-to-use buttons
  * manual how to attach and work with different buttons
  * manual how to make buttons
  * workshop during rundgang

[[Buttons I have made so far:]]

Text sources:
Dress for Life and Death: The Archaeology of Common Nineteenth-Century Buttons
Anatolijs Venovcevs, BA Hons, Staff Archaeologist
Archaeological Services Inc., Toronto
Paper written and presented for the 23rd annual Forward Into the Past Conference
April 6, 2013, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario

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