Page 48 - February1999

46 NAT]ONAN, B]IJIITON B{JN,N,E'TNN February 1999

Buttons tx
icyonD rnrButton Books

This is one of the most surreal I 8th C under slass buttons I have ever seen.
Painted on ivory, the polychrome jockey with a
racing whip is riding a strange cut-out white
paper shape with a woman's head in color
wearing a white triangular hat. In front of the
"Dali"-like figure is a racing pennant. What
does it mean? Whimsical, unimaginable
buttons like this make me glad I lucked into
this glorious hobby. This unusual button is
from the collection of Janel Hutchinson of
Kansas.

When I photographed Bruce Cole's button at the
California State Show, I thought it was a super
large engraved and pigmented coachman's
button. When the picture was developed, I
realized the subject on this button was of
one of England's earliest steam trains. We
looked it up in the British Railway Button
Book and the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but
we could not find an exact likeness. We feel
it was made between 1825-35 in Binningham,
England, which was famous for this type pearl
button. If you know more about this unusual button,
let us hear from you

The Editor spent l0 days in Sunnyvale this past December to
co-write and lay out the Czech glass article in this issue. At
the Santa Clara Valley Button Club meeting, Janelle Giles
brought this great, ghoulish button with two skeletons carved
in ivory. Their love is locking them together in an eternal
embrace - what a way to go!