Button Monday

I find a fair number of metal uniform buttons in my collection. These are not of the military variety, but rather buttons from the working man.  Maybe they held up pants, or closed a jumpsuit.  Most are nothing fancy, most have chipped paint and very little ornamentation, and compared to some of the pretty buttons they're pretty plain.

 Of course I love them.

Most of the uniforms have no discernable marking, but this one marked Dutchess Po'Keepsie intrigued me. I tried finding information but kept coming up short until a very sweet Twitter friend pointed me in the direction of this blog post.  It would seem that this plain little button could have been on a pair of Dutchess trousers from the late 1800s.  A suspender button perhaps?  

From the blog:  "They also had a warranty of sorts and for the first two months that you wore your ”dutchess trousers” they offered to pay 10¢ for every suspender button that came off, 50¢ if they ripped in the waistband, and $1 if they ripped in the seat or you would get a new pair of trousers free."  You don't see that kind of guarantee much anymore, do you?

I have a few other marked uniform buttons that I'd like to identify, just to satisfy my curiosity. If I get lucky and find information, I'll share them here.

I like to choose these chippy buttons for using as eyes on my bird ornaments. I wonder sometimes if people think I'm nuts for using these chippy little things instead of some pretty shiny number, but that's just kind of how I roll.

Happy Monday, all.