Hand-made to order.

At Peterborough last year I fell into conversation about hand-made buttons with fellow collector Neville Hackett.  I had heard of ‘rustic made’ buttons but had none in the collection.  More than just hand engraving on factory made buttons, we were referring to examples were the button itself is hand made.  Since then two lovely examples have joined the collection.  So here is a very short piece about them.

Firstly, this silver example for the Tyn-y-cymmer & Glog Hunt. (Apologies to my fellow Welshmen/women for the lack of the circumflex over the ‘O’ in Glog.)

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Originally two packs, during a short period of amalgamation the names were often interchangeable; Glog & Tyn-y-Cymmer or vice versa.   The diary note that came with this button states that Josiah Lewis (master and huntsman) asked his local smith/farrier to melt down his (Lewis’s) mother’s silver cream jug to make a set of twelve of blanks, and had them engraved.  Home comforts obviously took second place to hunting turnout!

Secondly, this fabulous hand-lathed, drilled and metal punched Gelligaer Farmers’ Hunt button.

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My sincere thanks to David Burles MFH for very kindly donating this and another button to The Firebrand Collection.

David tells me that it was quite common many years ago to have brass buttons made and inscribed by local mining engineers and metal workers.  I really like this button.  It is very ‘tactile’ indeed and has a genuine human touch to it.  It reminds me of something my late father would have made, himself an engineer by trade and collier in his youth.

Do any of my fellow collectors out there have any more examples they would care to share with us?

‘Firebrand’

 

 

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