The Button Tin Appreciation Society
We all have the same Grandma!
If you’re blessed enough to have or have had a grandmother, or are one yourself, or simply have the good fortune of being a lovely and thrifty person — you will recognize one of the most beloved treasures that have zero to do with electricity or computers:
The Button Tin!
It began with me stumbling on this Instagram meme, reposting it, and receiving comment after comment about how their grandmother also had the same exact collection of buttons, in a tin. And it didn’t matter where we grew up; we all seem to have had the same Grandma! Several followers from all over the world immediately told me they have carried on the button tin tradition and how they never throw away a stray button. How they would play with the buttons, endlessly, as children (often before the Internet existed). And how the stray button that comes into their lives goes into the button tin, just as it did for their own dear grandma, for a future time when said button might or will be needed. For that day may come! And you can never predict it. The button collection is a game of patience.
Now — all these years we button tin appreciators have been living in isolation from each other. Quietly we’ve saved buttons, looked with admiration at the deep geologic button layers of our grandmother’s vast collection, and only dreamed of owning as majestic a collection as her.
But now it’s time to come together and share our collected memories of The Button Tin!
Here, I will begin:
We’d lightly drag our fingers through the slippery cool buttons and randomly fish for the pretty ones. We’d line them up in rows and look for matching buttons. The favorites, the uglies, the old ones, the ones with two holes or four holes. Silently we thought about the buttons. About the way they looked. The colors. The smells. About the past and later, once we got older, about the future of the buttons.
Grandmother Gunhild knitted cardigans and sweaters for us, and the always included buttons from her button tin on her creations. She also sewed many of her own clothes and always found buttons from her button tin. She chose them with attention and care and they always matched the product perfectly.
Every time I visit my childhood home I pop by her house and walk through the rooms that still hold many of her belongings. The button tin is kept in an ornate cabinet made of dark solid wood. One of those with an oval mirror in the middle. There it is, frozen in time. All the buttons have at one time been touched by her hands. Somehow selected and made it into this enamel bowl. Now they look so — earthen? Sometimes, as a child, some of the buttons were colorful. Perhaps they got used over the years until only the earthen colors remained?
This past summer I picked up a button from the tin and put it in my pocket like a seashell. The green button with an indentation, six parallel lines and two holes. And it traveled with me to the other side of the world. Now it sits on a piece of brain coral on our coffee table. And I look at it most days and remember Grandma.
And yes, I do have a button collection but I must become more organized. The buttons are here and there, in small jewelry boxes and need to be merged into The Tin. Clearly I have the button gene, so that is good, but I must learn to use The Tin! And so must you!
So — now it’s time for you to show your button collection, your The Tin, or images of your grandmother’s collection of buttons!
Tag me in your post and let’s carry on this lovely tradition of collecting and safekeeping buttons! Absolutely no membership fee. You have buttons in a box somewhere? Yup, you’re already a member of The Button Tin Appreciation Society!
OK — show us your buttons!! Show us your The Button Tin!
Thanks for reading this far! Please press the heart button and consider sharing your own button story!
First time here? Welcome! Here you can read more about me.
Please follow my Substack — or help me buy a coffee through the QR code below.
How lovely that you looked at such a commonplace item as a button and made it into a beautiful, poignant story, Minna. I love these kinds of stories. My nana was a dressmaker and I remember she had lots of fascinating buttons, but I don't recall that she kept them in a tin; she might have; she did keep them in a collection. I save buttons, too, but they're all over the place. I must get more organized. Thank you for this.
I have my gran’s button … oh wait, it’s a jewelry box … and I crammed as many of my mother-in-law’s buttons into it from her two tins as I could before we moved.