All Buttons Great and Small - A Compelling History of the Button, From the Stone Age to Today by Lucy Godoroja was a dry yet interesting read. The Australian author owns her own button shop in Newtown, Sydney and her shop is called All Buttons Great and Small, inspiring the name of this book.
I'd love to visit her button shop one day, but Godoroja is clear from the start that she's not a collector:
"I am not a collector of buttons. I have always, however, been enthralled by them, and over the past 35 years millions of buttons have passed through my hands." Page 1Over the course of the book, I began to appreciate the author's interests seem to reside in the creation and design of buttons and their materials across time and cultures. However, I did learn some interesting button facts along the way.
Buttons were worn as an adornment, but I didn't know they once served as a portable means of value for the wearer, as it enabled a person to carry their investment with them in the case of an emergency.
Venetian glassmaking is internationally renowned, but I didn't know the establishment of Murano was an inspired government decision:
"With the burgeoning trade in Venice, in 1291 the government of the day made the decision to relocate the glass industry to the island of Murano, for fear of fires from the furnaces breaking out and spreading to the city centre, but particularly, with the added benefit of being able to shield industrial secrets from prying eyes." Page 66Buttons could be an expression of wealth and King Louis XIV of France shockingly spent more than $5M on buttons during his reign and once commissioned a set of at least 100 diamond buttons.
I learned that during the 1790s, the Parramatta Justice Precinct was home to the second convict hospital and evidence has been found of colonial bone button manufacturing on this site. It's assumed the many sew-through buttons discovered by archaeologists were made by hand by the convicts recuperating in the hospital or living in the huts on site.
I learned the difference between pottery and porcelain:
"Clay is the basic material of all types of pottery, but while porcelain is a type of pottery, not all pottery is porcelain. True porcelain is known as 'hard paste' as it requires hard firing at very high temperatures, after which it becomes extraordinarily dense." Page 104More interesting though was reading the brief section about koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons. Steve Jobs openly admitted suffering from this phobia, hence his preference for wearing skivvies or polo necked tops rather than shirts.
Those few highlights aside, there was way too much information provided on scientific developments and inventions of particular materials used to produce buttons for my liking. I didn't find it interesting at all to read about the evolution of various button making materials, and the chapter entitled The Plastics Evolution - comprising the invention and use of shellac, rubber, semi-synthetics, synthetics, bakelite, amino plastics, acrylic, plexiglass, perspex, lucite, acrylite - nearly sent me to sleep.
Borrowed from the library, button lovers and crafters won't find any button inspired artwork here. There's no chapter about button collections around the world - or within Australia - or research around the discovery and value of rare and precious buttons. High-end fashion designers and their use of buttons was included, but this wasn't of interest to me. There were some stunning colour photographs of buttons throughout this beautifully produced hardback, but ironically the captions didn't contain enough detail. There is an impressive bibliography and index, but no button trading or shopping references in the index or websites to visit.
All Buttons Great and Small - A Compelling History of the Button, From the Stone Age to Today by Lucy Godoroja is an academic button book for serious collectors, sellers or historians interested in the materials used to make buttons from ivory, wood and tortoiseshell right through to metals, alloys and plastics. I have a moderate interest in buttons but unfortunately it didn't extend this far.
