Black with Metallic Lace

My friend Doreen acquired this button last year and I was lucky enough to strike a deal and pocket this major find. As a collector of Bakelite buttons, I keep an eye out for the strange and the unusual. This button fits that description with four lacy prongs crawling up the sides of licorice black Bakelite. The prongs connect underneath the button and hence the button rests in a cradle of metallic gauze. And as if those metal frills weren't enough, the Bakelite is carved with a distinctive design that dates back to the 1930's. A dark beauty held captive in tarnished nickel. Isn't this button extravagant?

Visit Doreen's online store:
BUTTONS FROM THE ATTIC  

-Sherbert McGee

ART DECO: Floral

Most of the art deco buttons I've been posting this week present boldly geometric forms angled in straightforward extravagance. But the art deco "look" also takes its inspiration from nature and (finally) here's an example of that in the form of stylized leaves carved into butterscotch Bakelite. This ideal button of the 1920's exudes everything I look for in an old Bakelite treasure: strength, vitality, beauty and pizzazz. What I love most about the art deco style is the confidence it sets forth. Whether it be a flapper's cigarette-holder, a stately mantle clock or an exotic car's hood ornament (as pictured below), where there's an element of art deco you'll witness a flashback to the grand and eternally stunning ideas of another time. 

-Sherbert McGee

"There was going to be no more poverty, no more ignorance, 
no more disease. Art Deco reflected that confidence, 

vigor and optimism by using symbols of progress, speed and power."

—Robert MacGregor (British engineer)

ART DECO: Zowie!

What in the world? One of my favorite Bakelite anomalies is this totally bonkers toggle from the late 1920's and definitely an example of art deco extraordinaire. While the middle segment is bright red Bakelite, the conical ends are sturdy aluminum. I look at this button and all I can think of is a failed telephone that Alexander Graham Bell might've kept down in his cellar while he ironed the kinks out of his latest invention. Either that, or this could be a hybrid of a trumpet, an eggbeater, a boomerang and a satellite. I mean, is this button bananas or what? Truly a novelty of Jazz Age surrealism.

-Sherbert McGee

ART DECO: Planets

Here's another snazzy art deco button and this one is a triad of celestial spheres. It appears that a brown planet has rolled in front of a butterscotch sun that's scooted in front of another brown planet, if not a chocolate moon. All three pieces of this cosmic keeper tested positive for Bakelite. It's an otherworldly eclipse of vintage plastic from the 1930's—replete with my smudgy fingerprint. Oops!

Visit Doreen's online store:
BUTTONS FROM THE ATTIC

-Sherbert McGee