Ancient buttons ……. and that definition of being old

To some these are just a pile of buttons and yet in their way they offer up a bit of history.

Buttons ... buttons .... and more buttons, 2025

I don’t suppose in this throw away age the practice of accumulating a collection of buttons is as common as it was when I was growing up.

In the middle decades of the last century pretty much everyone I knew had a box of buttons to cover every eventuality.

More buttons, 2025

They sat beside boxes of nails, screws, and heaps of other things salvaged and stored ready for when they would be needed.

In the case of our Dad, they were neatly put away in old dried milk tins which were a left over from the last world war.

To these he added what ever he came across, including eighty copper earthing rods which had been made in the Anaconda Works in Salford and resided in the original cardboard boxes on a shelf in the garden shed in Well Hall Road.

Just when and how Dad would have used them we never asked, but it was part of that approach to life which was never to throw anything away if there was a remote chance it could be of use.

And our house won’t have been alone in having a last to repair shoes, a wooden darning mushroom for socks and of course a mix of buttons.

These buttons belonged to Liz Butcher’s mum and Liz was kind enough to share them with me.

Bits of brass, 2018

They took me back nearly 60 years to wet afternoons looking through the button boxes for treasures and finding instead odd buttons from long ago discarded cardigans, along with full sets which had been bought and never used.

Both Nana and mother knew exactly what were in the boxes and would be able to locate the right replacement or similar button to the one that had been lost of broken.

The darning mushroom, 2018

And then there were the boxes, which also had been repurposed from cake tins, cigarette containers or like dad from empty dried milk tins.

Depending on their age some would have begun to rust in the corners, the pictures on the lid and side fading with age, but some, some still had a faint aroma of what they had once contained.

Today most are now just curiosities or museum pieces but for those of us of a certain age they are a vivid reminder of that different way of life, best summed up by that phrase “Make Do and Mend” from the last war.

Although the idea of recycling has a much longer history and is again back in fashion, whether it is to repair where you can or exchange and come away with items from a charity shop.

                                    History at treble the price, 2019

Of course, I am also old enough to remember that in the past these emporiums of used but reusable things came from Second Hand shops.

Jugs galore, 2019

Now they exist in that range of charity shops from the ordinary to the upmarket, with many more appearing in antique showrooms.

These antique showrooms I try to avoid because such places fill me with a mix of bitter nostalgia mixed with incredulity that what cost next to nothing and sat on the sink command exorbitant prices and are exhibited as fascinating objet d'art.

And that reaction is I guess the closest I will come to a definition of being old.

Location; Eltham, Vintage Emporium, Pear Mill, Stockport

Pictures; Buttons, 2025, courtesy of Liz Butcher, Bits from our house, 2018, and History at treble the price ……. 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson