page_title: Button
section_title: Materials and manufacture
hierarchical_section_title: Button / Materials and manufacture
caption_attribution_description: Lot-8319-4: A button stamping machine at Henri Jamorski Button Factory, Paris, France, January 3, 1919. U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. (2016/07/22).
context_page_description: In modern clothing and fashion design, a button is a small fastener, now most commonly made of plastic but also may be made of metal, wood, or seashell, that joins two pieces of fabric together. In archaeology, a button can be a significant artifact. In the applied arts and in craft, a button can be an example of folk art, studio craft, or even a miniature work of art.
  Buttons are most often attached to articles of clothing but can also be used on containers such as wallets and bags. However, buttons may be sewn onto garments and similar items exclusively for purposes of ornamentation. Buttons serving as fasteners work by slipping through a fabric or thread loop or by sliding through a buttonhole. Other types of fastenings include zippers, Velcro, and magnets.
context_section_description: Because buttons have been manufactured from almost every possible material, both natural and synthetic, and combinations of both, the history of the material composition of buttons reflects the timeline of materials technology.
  Buttons can be individually crafted by artisans, craftspeople or artists from raw materials or found objects (for example fossils), or a combination of both. Alternatively, they can be the product of low-tech cottage industry or can be mass-produced in high-tech factories. Buttons made by artists are art objects, known to button collectors as "studio buttons" (or simply "studios", from studio craft).
  In 1918, the US government made an extensive survey of the international button market, which listed buttons made of vegetable ivory, metal, glass, galalith, silk, linen, cotton-covered crochet, lead, snap fasteners, enamel, rubber, buckhorn, wood, horn, bone, leather, paper, pressed cardboard, mother-of-pearl, celluloid, porcelain, composition, tin, zinc, xylonite, stone, cloth-covered wooden forms, and papier-mâché. Vegetable ivory was said to be the most popular for suits and shirts, and papier-mâché far and away the commonest sort of shoe button.
  Nowadays, hard plastic, seashell, metals, and wood are the most common materials used in button-making; the others tending to be used only in premium or antique apparel, or found in collections.
  Over 60% of the world's button supply comes from Qiaotou, Yongjia County, China.
caption: Button stamping machine,
  Henri Jamorski Button Factory,
  Paris, France, 1919
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