“They’re called moonglows because they look like moonstone gems,” says Elaine Pitra as she runs her fingers over smooth, glass buttons arranged on a card. To the unenlightened, they look like broken chunks of cat’s-eye marbles.
“They were made for ladies’ dresses and blouses from the ’30s to the ’60s, so a lot of people have them in their button jars,” Pitra says. “The yellows and purples are the rarest. Greens and pinks are more common. What I’d really like to have is a pierced moonglow, with open glasswork border. They’re rare and sell for $150 or more, compared to as little as a dollar for a regular moonglow.”
Surrounded by her button collection in her button room, a spare bedroom in her tidy Downers Grove tri-level, and dressed in a button T-shirt, Pitra is in button bliss.
“Sometimes, I come up here and work on my button trays until the wee hours,” Pitra says. “I check upcoming award classifications — they change every year — put together new trays.” (A “tray” is button-collector lingo for a 9-by-12-inch piece of cardboard used in competitions, with groups of buttons attached.)
Here, dozens of trays, filed upright in boxes, are grouped by themes (dogs, horses, hearts, moons, bears, ladybugs, eagles) and by material (vegetable ivory, pearl, wood, fabric and porcelain). On the wall are winning trays mounted in wooden frames made by fellow button buffs. On Pitra’s desk is her small library of button books and a chain of button-sizing rings. Under the desk are jars, boxes and tins of buttons. The room is decorated with a button clock, a button doll and a miniature Christmas tree with button ornaments.
In addition to competing in shows sponsored by the National Button Society (NBS), Pitra is president of the Illinois State Button Society, which has 115 members and hosts an annual show each May in East Peoria. And she is secretary of the Prairie Button Collectors, one of eight Chicago-area groups. Prairie meets monthly at members’ homes and includes 15 button fans.
According to NBS secretary Lois Pool of Akron, Pitra is one of more than 4,500 members of a growing group of button bugs ages 8 to 98. “We have members who are doctors, teachers, lawyers, homemakers. You name it, they’re in the group,” Pool says. “The majority are women, but there are many men who collect; they often collect the military or transportation buttons.” What’s the common thread? “Learning history through buttons,” Pool says.
“There are accumulators and there are collectors,” says Bonnie Nelson of Rock Island, a state and national button judge. “Collectors know the button history; they’re serious. Elaine is a collector. For collectors, competition is a way of showing off what you’ve done, like getting a prize for the best cookies at the county fair.”
Pitra says button collecting is a painless way for kids to learn history. “The junior members in the national and state groups look up buttons, then learn more about that period of time,” she says. “I’m amazed; some of them know a lot more than the adults.”
The button-collectors’ bible is the NBS’ folksy National Button Bulletin, which includes photographs of winning button trays, stories about specific types of buttons and advertisements from companies selling button calendars, button videos, mahogany button trays and, of course, all sorts of buttons.
“Compared to a lot of them, I haven’t been collecting very long,” Pitra admits. In fact, she knew little about buttons until she read an article about them in a February 1992 Wall Street Journal, one of many financial newspapers and magazines she reads to track the stock market. “I pick my own stocks. I don’t buy mutual funds,” says the mother of four grown children and grandmother of “one plus one on the way.”
“Then I bought the book `Buttons’ (by Diana Epstein and Millicent Safro, $49.50), and I was hooked,” Pitra says. “I went to the library and sat down and read all the button books. I went home and went through my mother’s, grandmother’s and mother-in-law’s button tins. I’d been toting them around for years, but I’m not a sewer, so I didn’t use them. I found a 1920s metal Peter Pan button in my grandmother’s tin and a 1930s vegetable ivory in my mother-in-law’s tin.”
The first buttons Pitra bought came from a Chicago button shop: a composition inlay button from the 1920s for $8 and a handful of Czechoslovak glass buttons from the 1940s for $2 each.
Pitra likens her first trip to a button shop to a trip to a candy store. “It was overpowering; there were thousands of buttons, old ones and new, studio buttons. I was there for an hour. Then I went to another shop in Chicago that is my favorite, Renaissance Button, and spent two hours. Today I couldn’t go into Renaissance without spending $200.”
Now Pitra figures her collection includes thousands. Her prized possession is a 19th Century Tingue button she purchased for $95. “It’s foil between two pieces of glass,” Pitra says as she examines a tiny black button no bigger than the tip of her pinkie finger. “These are named for New York State Sen. John H. Tingue, who offered $50 in 1886 to (females under 20) who could bring him strings of 2,700 buttons in 30 days.”
Tingue made the offer in a letter to the Seymour (Conn.) Record after seeing a “charm string” of buttons at the Connecticut State Fair. Tingue’s request unearthed 90,000 buttons, which he presented to the state of Connecticut.
As a result, the type of glass buttons made in Connecticut in the 1880s, which comprised much of the strings he received, are now known by collectors as Tingues.
Pitra’s bugaboo: jewelry-makers who use old buttons and alter them by removing the shanks or using glue. “That’s a no-no,” Pitra says. “A lot of beautiful buttons have been ruined this way. The national newsletter even reminds members to discourage this when they see it.”
Pitra says old buttons are still available, although button-collecting is growing. She combs garage sales, flea markets, antique shops and estate sales. Some of Pitra’s coworkers at Pepperidge Farm’s Downers Grove plant, where she works as a molder operator, bring her their family button jars. As she spreads the word at talks she gives at museums, libraries and club meetings, novice collectors rush to save their mothers’ and grandmothers’ button jars from landfills.
“At garage sales, I’ve learned to ask for button jars because people don’t always have them out for sale,” Pitra says. “But, if you ask, people often say, `Sure, we have one in the basement,’ and they bring them out. At estate sales, I’ve learned to ask if a jar has been gone through already by an appraiser or collector.”
Interestingly, Pitra says, sometimes the search yields a bonus. “Twice, I’ve bought tins of buttons from estate sales and found that the tins were worth more than the buttons,” she says as she pulls out an octagonal antique Sunshine Biscuit tin with a Hiawatha motif.
As old-button supplies shrink, more artists are making new “studio” buttons for collectors. “Many of these people work from their homes and sell through the shows,” Pitra says. “They are reviving many of the old art forms like the paperweight, hand-embroidery and marquetry (decorative inlaid work).”
Most of Pitra’s award-winning trays are mixtures of old and new buttons, grouped by themes. The NBS considers buttons predating 1918 old and those made after 1918 modern.
“You must follow the NBS guidelines exactly,” Pitra says. “The Official NBS Classification System book tells the correct size of the tray, the number of buttons on a tray and the different classifications. The judging is very strict. If your tray has a wrong button–say a celluloid button on a tray of plastics–the judges put a red circle sticker on your tray. They call those measles. Even collectors who have done it 30 to 40 years get measles because you can be fooled into thinking a button is a different material. Some materials are easy to identify, like pearl or glass. But you can confuse Bakelite with celluloid.”
Five times a year, Pitra and Susan Maxwell, a button buddy from Naperville, pack up their trays and head for button shows, where they compete and button-shop. They hit the national NBS show and at least four state shows.
“This is not a hobby where you collect things and put them away,” Maxwell says. “It’s absorbing. We’re constantly redoing our trays and adding buttons, even at 2 a.m. the night before competition in our hotel rooms. Sometimes we don’t find the last button we need for a tray until we get to the show.”
For a long day at a show, they wear tennis shoes and button measures on chains around their necks and carry large canvas bags. “When the show doors open, we’re like kids on Christmas morning,” Maxwell says.
Pitra’s husband, Wayne, a retired vending route service representative, says he’s a button widower during the shows, but he shares his wife’s thrill of the hunt at garage sales. “We are collectors period; we’re both nuts. It’s a thrill to find something that’s worth more than you pay for it,” he says.
Their daughter, Denise Kowalczyk of Woodridge, says most of the family carries the collecting gene: “Dad collects beer steins, I collect Norman Rockwell plates, my brother Matt collects things with eagle motifs and my brother Guy collects Ford memorabilia. The only one who doesn’t is my brother Adam, as far as I know.”
But Mom is the only Pitra who is a confessed buttonholic. She still reads the financial press. Otherwise, her life has changed for the button. “I used to be an avid bowler. I used to do macrame. I used to collect other things,” she says. “But now, buttons, family and work–that’s my life.”
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For more information about the Illinois State Button Society or the Prairie Button Collectors, contact Pitra at 630-968-6046. Contact the National Button Society through Lois Pool, 2733 Juno Place, Akron, Ohio 44333; 330-864-3296.
