NWA Heritage Button Club founder discusses exhibit on display at Bella Vista Historical Museum

BELLA VISTA -- Robin Schrad, founder of the NWA Heritage Button Club, recently discussed a vintage button collection that is temporarily on display at the Bella Vista Historical Museum.

She said when she first moved to Bella Vista she had a box full of buttons she had been using for math and science when she was teaching, and in searching online, she discovered there is a National Button Society. There was no chapter in Arkansas at the time, and the closest meeting was in Springfield, Mo. She attended and met Joyce Havner of Mountain Home. They both decided to start chapters in Arkansas. Schrad started a local chapter, and Havner is trying to get a state-level club going, she said.

"[Bella Vista] is a retirement community, and that is the generation that has unique and vintage buttons," Schrad said.

She went to the local quilt guild and talked to them about creating a button club. She set a date and had six people at the first meeting. The club meets the third Friday of the month at the Bentonville Public Library from noon to 2 p.m. The next meeting will be Aug. 18, and newcomers are welcome.

The National Button Society's main mission statement, she said, is to promote educational research, spread information about buttons and preserve their historical significance. Schrad hopes to encourage people to attend the club's meetings and become members.

"You never know where you'll meet someone who is curious about buttons [or} has grandma's button tin," she said.

Buttons can be of interest to all age groups, she said. The club plans to reach out to Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, the Boys & Girls Club and 4-H clubs, she said.

"We want to reach out to that generation," she said.

She also said men often get involved because of military buttons. She was hoping the Bella Vista Civil War Round Table might have some military buttons.

Part of button collecting is researching the materials, vintage and companies that made the buttons, she said.

"A lot of people like the historical research part," she said.

She has a collection of mother-of-pearl buttons in the display. She said she learned that Arkansas had a pearl button industry in the early 1900s. Settlers that came to the area discovered freshwater muscles in the White River area, and some discovered pearls, she said. It was called the Pearl Rush. One of the detriments was the decline of freshwater muscles in the rivers, she said.

In the mid-1900s, plastics became more popular and pushed pearl buttons aside, she said. There are different types of plastics. Early plastics were called celluloid, she said. Bakelite is another type of plastic that vintage buttons are made of.

Natural materials that buttons are made from include tagua nut (from South America), horn, antler, bone, coconut and leather. They can also be made from glass, porcelain, china and metal, for example.

National Button Society dues are $35 per year, and for that the member receives five bulletins a year and a Blue Book with classifications and specifications for collecting and display, she said.

"When you start, with their help, you can start realizing what you have," she said.

Some collectors make button art, usually with less expensive buttons, she said. Buttons may cost anywhere from five cents to hundreds of dollars, she added.

The exhibit will be on display through August.

Schrad added, "You don't have to have buttons to come to the meeting. [Come] if you're just curious and want to learn something."

Print Headline: The beauty of buttons

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