Intaglio Terrier

For years now I've been calling these "bubble buttons," "window buttons," and "windowed Bakelite." The correct word for this style of glass dome preserving a small, chiseled image is intaglio from the Italian word for "engraved." Pictured here, today's intaglioed button features...what else? Another dog! This beautiful barker with silvery white fur is a Scottish Terrier, but that's not too surprising. Exactly all of the dog buttons I'm posting this week pay tribute to lil' Scotties. And why would that be so? I'll tell you. Scottish Terriers were popular dogs throughout the 1920's and 30's and became America's most fashionable pet between World War I and World War II. Rudyard Kipling owned one and President Roosevelt was very fond of his pet dog, a Scottie named Fala. In the board game Monopoly, which first hit shelves in 1935, one of the well-known playing tokens is shaped like a Scottish Terrier. So here's an example of how a specific, animal-related, historical fad marked itself on a button. With all this talk of intaglio craftsmanship and Scottish Terriers, let's not lose sight of the fact that this hard-to-find button is made of solid Bakelite in a toothsome tone of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. Made during the trinket jewelry fad of the 1930's.

-Sherbert McGee