My better half is interested in buttons, so of course people regularly give her batches of them. Usually they come out of some obscure drawer, or are the collection of a recently departed family member. Most are not of value, but that's not to say there are not interesting things mixed in at times. A recent batch had several oddities. Starting with these:
I've given them a bit of a clean, but in their original form they were dark grey, encrusted with stuff, and tied together with a bit of thread. So, what do we have here?
The larger buttons show a cannon and flag. The material is pewter, that odd conglomeration of tin and other metals, often with a fair percentage of lead. They are rather heavy.
Notice that this is not a traditional American flag. Below is the smaller size, it has an odd monogram.
Naturally one turns first to a scholarly work that actually is called "The Big Book of Buttons". It has a lot of info but does not rival the internet. Just a couple of clicks showed me several similar buttons including a grouping just like mine that was being offered for sale as "possibly Revolutionary War" era. Hmmm. I had my doubts. The two styles were very different. And what are the odds that identical sets would survive? Also on the back there were numbers stamped. 6 on the small ones and 4 on the larger ones. It looked like such a clean, deep strike that I doubted it was done 200 plus years ago.
Just a little more sleuthing uncovered this:
Looks pretty familiar, no? This is a set of reproduction buttons, based on actual specimens excavated at Revolutionary war battle field sites. They are not even from the same uniform, the larger ones being a style worn by Continental Army artillery officers, the smaller ones are from a New York militia unit. The odd monogram is a version of NY.
They were given away on July 4th 1969 by Time Magazine as a commemorative item.
So I'm 99.9% sure I don't have actual Revolutionary War pewter buttons here. But still, its history after a fashion. It is after all about a half century since they came out, and in a very momentous year. Moon Landing, Woodstock, assassinations, etc.
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