I have quite a few red bakelite buttons in my collection of jewelry-making materials, but this is the most beautiful one I have found so far.
It's a deep, rich red that somehow looks very Asian, and it is hand-carved in a design that resembles a pair of abstract fans.
To buy this necklace: The Red Button Necklace
Photo: @ Monica Strasen 2010.
Design and text: @ Jeanne Sather 2010.
I've made several necklaces that show off one beautiful vintage-bakelite button.
For those of you not familiar with bakelite, it is an early plastic much used during the 1930s and 1940s for household items and jewelry. These uses were phased out in the mid-1940s when bakelite was needed by the military to make radios and such, and as other plastics came along.
But collectors love bakelite, and the buttons are wonderful little pieces of hand-carved art that I always marvel at--how could someone spend time carving a button that was going to be sold for a cent or two? (I usually pay $10 a button or more for nicely carved ones like the one in this photo.)
The necklace Megan is wearing in this photo has a hand-carved bakelite button in the color known as creamed corn. I paired the button with two strands of small black-onyx beads, which are pulled into flower-shaped cones of Thai silver and attached to several inches of sterling silver chain.
To read more about this necklace, or to buy it, please go to this link:
Here is one more similar necklace:
To read more about bakelite:
Photo: @ Monica Strasen 2010.
Design and text: @ Jeanne Sather 2010.
Here's one more necklace designed to show off a beautiful, vintage bakelite button.
This button, which was made in the 1930s-1940s, is hand-carved. The color is known to collectors as creamed corn, and it is as yummy a shade of yellow as you will find anywhere.
I paired the button with two strands of small black-onyx beads, which are pulled into flower-shaped cones of Thai silver and then attached to several inches of sterling silver chain.
The one-of-a-kind necklace is finished with a handmade sterling silver hook and a Thai silver leaf and large rectangular bead of black onyx.
The length is about 20 inches, plus a two-inch extender chain.
Price: $80. The price includes all taxes, postage, and insurance to U.S. destinations.
If you are outside the United States, please e-mail me to discuss your shipping options: jeanne.sather@gmail.com
Vintage bakelite buttons, like the one I used to make this necklace, were hand-carved. It amazes me that craftsmen put as much effort into carving a button as they did a bangle bracelet, a pair of earrings, or a brooch.
I can't begin to fathom the economics of that--what did a single button cost in 1930?
Economics aside, though, the buttons deserve our attention for their beauty.
This rich red button has an Asian feel, and I paired it with black onyx beads for even more drama. The one-of-a-kind necklace is finished with sterling silver chain and a large onyx bead to weight the extender chain.
Price: $80. The price includes taxes, postage, and insurance to U.S. destinations.
The new postcards for my jewelry business landed on the front porch the other day, and I'm thrilled with how well they look.
Monica, one of my closest friends, shot the photo. She shoots most of the photos for this blog and has a wonderful talent for making my pieces look good. That's important when most of my customers don't get to handle or try on my jewelry before buying it.
Laurie, another close friend, took the image and put the postcards together in Photoshop and ordered them from the printer.
That's a task I could do, but it would stress my abilities a bit (I'd have to learn something new, which is hard sometimes when you don't have a lot of bandwidth), and it is so nice to have a competent friend take over the job.
Now I have postcards to promote my jewelry in a low-key sort of way, which is all I'm comfortable with. I always include a few postcards when I mail a jewelry purchase. I leave them around town at restaurants and coffee places where I hang out. My friends have stacks of them as well.
The previous batch of postcards featured a photo of a turquoise bracelet with a vintage sterling charm. It was a great image, but after that bracelet sold I wanted to use something else. (This is the older postcard: Sterling and Turquoise Bracelet . I still have a few and am happy to send you some with your order. Just ask.)
I am determined to start a new fashion with my jewelry made with vintage bakelite buttons. Each piece is unique, each piece has the charm of an object that has been used and lived with for decades--what the Japanese call wabi sabi--and there is a quirkiness about taking such a mundane, everyday object, a button, and making jewelry with it. Or so I think.
See:
Vintage Jewelry: My Collection
Photo: Monica Strasen.
@ Jeanne Sather 2010.
When my mother was a child, during the Great Depression, I think every family had a button box. That's where you went when you lost a button, rather than to the store.
And the buttons! Every possible shape and size and color. Some were plain men's shirt buttons, not very interesting until you spent time playing with them--how many holes did they have? Were they bone or shell or plastic? Shiny or matte?
The buttons I remember best, and wish I had now, were once part of a pair of mother-daughter dresses that my mother and I wore in about 1960 (Remember the mother-daughter thing?). The buttons were round and black with a brass shank at the base. There was a design carved into the top of the buttons, and they were fairly small.
Not long after I left home, I started my own button box. So my boys have played with buttons too.
One Saturday back in February, when Younger Son came home to have lunch with me (and so I could tell him about the tumor in my lung), I had the button box out because I was working on a project. Younger Son sat down and started sifting through the buttons just like he had done when he was small. And he commented that it had been years since he'd played with the buttons. That's probably true--seven or eight years would be my guess.
In any case, the buttons were a great distraction from the rather serious topic that we were discussing, and we both kept sifting and sorting them as we talked.
