buttonhook

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Boot button with ebony handle. Auckland War Memorial Museum

A buttonhook or button hook (English: buttonhook, including: button hook) is a metal hook on a stem with handle that was used buttons , mostly in boots or gloves , lighter by the corresponding buttonholes to draw. Boot buttons were particularly popular in the Victorian era when women's fashion dictated button boots made from stiff leather. They were usually about the size of a fork, but could also be much smaller or larger, depending on whether it was about buttons on collars, gloves, corsets or boots. Between 1880 and World War I , boot buttons were an item that practically every household had. Today they have become a collector's item; there is a "Buttonhook Society", which is dedicated to collecting and displaying boot buttons.

history

Modern button and zipper aid, 2018

Button aids have been around for centuries. As early as 1611 they were mentioned in Randle Cotgrave's French-English dictionary under the French headword “boutonneur”: “A buttoner, or an instrument wherewith buttons are pulled through their over-strait holes”, so something like: “a device with which one Pulls buttons through their too tight holes. "

From the second half of the 19th century, button hooks were manufactured and sold in large quantities. They were widespread from around 1865 to 1930, most of the examples still preserved today date from the period between 1880 and 1930. They were probably first marketed for buttoning gaiters , which were popular in men's fashion in the 1860s; the button hook was mainly used by men at the time. From the mid-1870s, long, tight-fitting gloves with up to 24 buttons that reached above the elbows became popular in women's fashion, as did dresses, blouses and jackets with numerous buttons close together. Getting dressed has become a time-consuming and skillful task that has been made much easier by special buttoning aids. A contemporary paper wrote in 1872 that a glove button for this purpose "was far superior to the hairpin"; apparently this specialized device replaced the multifunctional hairpin . Above all, however, technical advances in shoe and boot manufacture played an important role in the rise of the great boot buttons. The use of sewing machines in industrial shoe production made it possible to use tough, stiff leather or firm, heavy fabrics for boot uppers. Accordingly, the buttonholes were rigid and unyielding and the use of a boot button became necessary. At the same time, buttoned ankle boots and boots for women came into fashion, often with up to 20 buttons.

In the heyday of boot buttons, around 1880 to 1920, button hooks and boot buttons were needed and used practically every day by adults and children as buttoning aids; the device was found in almost every household. Numerous patents have been applied for and issued in the United States for the design and improvement of boot buttons. In her search, Deborah Ellen Blodgett found no less than 250 relevant patent specifications, the vast majority of them from the years between 1876 and 1920. However, from around 1920 there was a clear decline. There were several reasons for this: The development of new clothing fasteners , especially the zip , made buttoning aids unnecessary; women's fashion changed from tight-fitting dresses and shoes to more sporty models; and button boots clearly lost their popularity in favor of laced or zipped boots. From around 1930 boot buttons were hardly made anymore.

Today's models of buttoning aids, which usually have a wire loop instead of a metal hook, are used as an aid for one-handed buttoning of garments in the event of illness or disability, such as paralysis or loss of a hand.

Application and design

Boot buttons in use

The boot button had to be passed through the buttonhole, then the button had to be grasped with the hook and pulled through the buttonhole. With a turn of the device the button was released again, so that one could concentrate on the next button. This required some skill and, above all, time, as button boots often had more than twenty buttons. Those who wore button boots seldom took them off during the day to avoid this hassle; It was also advisable to have a boot button with you in case the buttons came off during the day. The boot button was therefore not only a common item on the “lady's dressing table”, but also in her handbag .

The boot buttons were often designed individually in their wedding. There were boot buttons made of gold or silver, also with different decorations and in different designs. Small button hooks for men, for example for collar buttons , were also found on pocket knives . Button hooks for women's gloves often had a small ring at the end of the handle, which was used to attach the item to a chatelaine . In addition, boot buttons were often used as advertising material, especially in the USA, with the advertising company stamped on them.

Improper uses

Such boot buttons used the buttonhook men.

The everyday household item was also used for tasks that did not meet its original purpose. Its use by health inspectors, the “buttonhook men”, who had been checking immigrants to the USA on Ellis Island for infectious diseases since the beginning of the 20th century , became known. To diagnose trachoma , they folded the immigrant's eyelid with either their fingers or with the help of a boot button or hairpin . It is said to have been a very quick but painful and dreaded procedure.

Occasionally the use of the button hook for illegal abortions is reported, for example in medical reports or in the autobiography Das Ei und ich , where the narrator received an unsolicited offer from a local resident to terminate her pregnancy in this way at the end of the 1920s. When she reports this to the clinic, the answer is: “The hospital is always full of them. Boot buttons, binding wire, hat pins . "

Collect

In 1979 the Buttonhook Society was founded in Maidstone ( Kent ) as an organization for collectors of boot buttons. It publishes the magazine "The Boutonneur" for its members, has produced an illustrated multi-volume compendium on its collecting topic and organizes exhibitions and fairs for collectors every year. Particular areas of collection include boot buttons with handles made of silver or handles decorated with gemstones, "trench art", ie boot buttons made in trenches where the handle was often made from bullets and cartridge cases, and boot buttons with manufacturer imprints that were distributed as advertising material.

literature

  • Debora Ellen Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener: The Button Hook - An Essential Garment Tool. A Study of Function and Design Through Analysis of United States Patents 1865-1930 . In: The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association , Vol. 69 (2016), No. 3 (September), pp. 89-101

Web links

Commons : Boot buttons  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mary Brooks Picken: A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion: Historic and Modern . Dover Publications, Mineola 1999, p. 41; Valerie Cumming, CW Cunnington, PE Cunnington: The Dictionary of Fashion History . Berg, Oxford / New York 2010, p. 36.
  2. ↑ See Collecting buttonhooks on the Buttonhook Society website and Randel Cotgrave: A Dictionarie to the French and English Tongues . Adam Iflip, London 1611, keyword boutonneur .
  3. ^ Deborah Ellen Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener , p. 89
  4. ↑ See the homepage of the Buttonhook Society .
  5. ↑ Deborah Ellen Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener , p. 89; Sue Brandon: Buttonhooks and Shoehorns , Shire Publications, Buckinghamshire 1995, pp. 5-6.
  6. ^ Critic Gossip . In: Daily Critic , November 4, 1872, p. 1; quoted in Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener , p. 91.
  7. ↑ Deborah Ellen Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener , pp. 89-90; see. also Nancy E. Rexford: Women's Shoes in America, 1795–1930, Kent State University Press, Kent 2000, p. 17.
  8. ↑ Deborah Ellen Blodgett: A Fascinating Fastener , pp. 89, 93, 101.
  9. ↑ Product group 02.40.01.1 "Button aids" in the list of resources of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds , online .
  10. ^ Henry Petroski: Knife, fork, zipper: The evolution of everyday objects . Birkhäuser, Basel 1994, pp. 126–127.
  11. ↑ See Collecting buttonhooks on the website of the Buttonhook Society.
  12. ↑ See, for example, the article Ellis Island on history.com and Diana L. Linden: Visual Essay , in: Annie Polland, Daniel Soyer (eds.): Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920 . New York University Press, New York and London 2012, pp. 255–287, here: p. 263.
  13. ^ Leslie J. Regan: When Abortion Was a Crime. Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 . University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1997, p. 42; Betty MacDonald : The Egg and I . Lippincott, Philadelphia 1945, p. 100. In the original language: “The hospital's full of 'em all the time. Buttonhooks, bailing wire, hatpins. "
  14. ↑ See Collecting buttonhooks on the website of the Buttonhook Society.