The Great Button Hunt

I'm not the jealous type, but when Marigold Jam told us about her button-box find, I realised that I was having withdrawal symptoms from the great button hunt. I knew what to do - I went to the charity shop in Blagnac, which is called Frip'Relais, and had a rummage through ONE of their two drawers of buttons.You'll see a certain colour-coding to my search - I like to use red, white and blue buttons on my shop packaging, and I have a personal obsession with Mother of Pearl...

I was 'helped' in my search by Brandon, a tiny weeny French-African boy (not much over 12 months old, I should think), who abandoned his clothes-shopping mother to do something much more interesting, which involved 'talking' on the toy phone near my sorting area, and an occasional bit of 'sorting' with me. What a cutie. He had quite a good vocabulary for such a tiny tot, but tended to begin sentences in recognisable French and end them in a lovely, rolling, babble. He only tried to actually eat one button...

And I got all the ones I wanted back from him in the end...

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Now, it is just possible that some of you are novices in the field of obsessive button hunting. Some of you (Liz to name but one) are scarily obsessed, and might enjoy this post too! But here's my guide to my own personal style of button hunt. You begin with something like the jumble of buttons, little plastic bags and rusty pins below. Watch out! It is obligatory for all button boxes to contain something that can injure you.

At first glance, even the most experienced won't see any Mother of Pearl buttons. These buttons must be heavier than others, because they are ALWAYS at the bottom of the box. This is not just Murphy's Law, there has to be some physics involved.

Now, do any of you think you've seen some MOP? If so, you'd be right, but really, the photo won't work, as you have to touch them to be sure.

Here we are down at the bottom of the tin, and there's a good chance that the ones that LOOK like MOP are MOP, down here in the depths.

Time for a bit of hyperventilating - there are clearly a LOT of MOP buttons in this tin. You would never have known from a glance at the top layer.So, from a plastic drawer which seemed at first to have no MOP buttons, I actually found all these after half an hour's searching/babysitting Brandon.

Shall we just have another gloating glance?

This is what the dedicated MOP button collector is up against. The traditional buttons, made of the shiny insides of shells known as Mother of Pearl, have been copied more recently in all types of plastic, because this is just what buttons are meant to look like, isn't it? So, how many of the lineup below are genuine MOP, do you think?

If you're an expert, you know you have to look at the back to be certain, don't you? MOP buttons usually have some of the shell's outsides on their backs. The photos of the backs are below. But even then it's not easy, and that's why I say you have to handle them to be sure. If you want to know from someone who's been stroking them, from left to right:

1 is real MOP, but the shell back is white, so it's hard to tell.

2 is plastic. Bet you guessed from the first photo!

3 is real and easy to identify MOP, with that nice shell backing.

4 is fake, fake, fake! But really that's not fair, because it's not trying to pretend it's anything but plastic.

5 is real MOP, but you have to stroke it to be sure, as the back of the shell was white and smooth. Real shell feels colder and has more texture than your average plastic one.

6 is FAKE! And this one really is fake - it's been given a fake shell backing and everything! I used to hate it when Marks and Spencers used fake MOP buttons in the 1980s, when Laura Ashley was using real ones, but actually it's probably far more environmentally friendly not to go dredging up shellfish to make buttons these days. That's one reason it's good to collect second hand ones..

I just thought I'd show you the two pretties (MOP of course) that I found. Pearly Queen (great name) at Violet White was saying she's seen these going for over two euros each, recently... A bit crazy.

And back to the 'spot the real MOP' game, because sometimes it's naturally grey...Obviously, we have to turn them over... and you can see it's the one on the right. Isn't it a beautiful button?Here's some revision (it's clearly time for this teacher to take a holiday). Here are the backs of three fake buttons:And the backs of three real ones:What do you think of these two? The one on the left is real shell: abalone or maybe that New Zealand shell which my NZ friends will have to name for me! The one on the right uses some interesting shell patterns, but it's plastic. Kind of cute, though. A final glance at the variety of MOP - the slightly pink one and the dark blue ones are dyed.And here they all are in situ, in my MOP button tin! What a very satisfying button hunt. And there's a second drawer waiting for me one of these days...