0

fShare

Tweet

In last week's newsletter, we asked you to guess the use for this unusual item, which we found while strolling through the booths at the Houston Quilt Festival. All is now revealed!  It's an antique button sorter, which was offered for sale by Sandy Schor & Co.  Each metal paddle was designed to hold a specific quantity of buttons of a specific size. 

Workers in the factory would scoop the paddle into large bins filled with thousands of specifically sized buttons. When the scoop was given a slight shake, each button would find its home in the indentations, while the remaining loose buttons would fall off the paddle and back into the bin. Then the buttons, thus counted, could be packaged and made ready for sale to retail shops.

Shell buttons derive from shells, just as the name implies. These buttons could be core drilled from a large shell to produce a single large button (center top), or from numerous places in the shell to produce smaller buttons (two items at left). Children's garments and women's blouses required very small buttons (center bottom). These tiny embellishments were drilled from even smaller bits of shell. The piece of shell shown on the bottom right is the "remains" after these tiniest buttons have been drilled and removed.

Shell buttons are no longer manufactured in the United States. Sandy Schor, who specializes in vintage jewelry, trims, buttons, and other collectible items, recently bought out the last core- drilling pearl button factory in New England. As part of the agreement, Sandy was required to take the entire stock of pearl buttons, along with the machinery used to produce them. It took ten semi trucks (!) to transport 300,000 mother-of-pearl buttons and numerous button sorters, as well as the factory's machinery, back to Ft. Worth, TX. 

If you look closely, you just might see some of the sorters and machinery in the recent film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Sandy leased the entire stock (minus the buttons) to the film's producers for use in that movie, which starred Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.