History of Button Down Designs

One dreary winter afternoon, in early 2006, I dumped my antique button collection into a large baking pan, and started sorting them, by color, into little pots. I selected a few dozen of my favorites, laid them out on the kitchen table in a pleasing design, and sewed them onto a skinny piece of elastic found in my sewing box. My first button bracelet was born. It was halfway through my son's year-long deployment to Iraq. The days had been dragging on, and the nights had seemed endless. All that was about to change.

In the days and weeks to come I became engrossed in, mesmerized by, and enthralled with the buttons. Everything about my world was transformed. Each day was a new adventure to look forward to. It was the perfect outlet for my instinctive drive to acquire, organize, design, and create. I was hooked. The little ironstone pots grew larger, and larger. The designs became more appealing each day. All my friends and relatives were given button bracelets, as well as many other people I barely knew. It was only a matter of time before my husband suggested a name for the new venture; Button Down Designs. The rest is History.

Finding the Buttons

Every household in the 19th and early 20th century had a button box, and many of these survive today. The majority of buttons within these boxes are faded, worn-looking, scratched, stained, chipped, or dented. I have sorted through literally hundreds of thousands of dirty, old buttons, saving only the oldest, most interesting, and best quality of these. The secret to beautiful button bracelets is finding the gems within these boxes, restoring them to pristine condition, and patiently designing and sewing them into "Art for your wrist". Knowledge about the age and history of each type of button is also important. I have been a serious antique collector for over 40 years, and I believe I can date most buttons to their approximate decade.

Construction of the Bracelets

Each Button Down Design bracelet is unique and made to last. The buttons have been collected from Wiscasset, Maine to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and countless places in between. The buttons selected date from the 1840's to 1940's. They are carefully cleaned and sorted one at a time, then combined into eye catching designs. The buttons are stacked, in descending size order, and sewn, one stack at a time, onto sturdy elastic. The stacks overlap each other so that on the curve of one's wrist, no elastic is visible. The ends are sewn together securely, so that there is no clasp to break.

Included with each bracelet is a black velvet drawstring gift pouch, as well as a hand written hang-tag describing in detail the type of buttons, and their age, used in that particular bracelet.