Button found in Chilean desert

[Chile79]

Button found on Chilean desert where the Chile/Peru conflict took place in 1879 is it military or civilian? Any information about it will be greatly appreciated.
Found it unusual because most of the uniforms to that date were French. It is about 21cm in diameter.

 

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[TheCannonballGuy]

Hi Chile79. Welcome to the What-Is-It? forum. I see you figured out how to include photos in your forum-posts at TreasureNet. Thank you for the photos showing both the front and back of the button... the back is particularly important for time-dating a metal button.

The general form of your button, being a brass hollow 2-piece "domed" button, with a 6-pointed floral or geometric design on its front, and a backmark saying "Rich / Standard" tells us it was manufactured in Britain sometime between the mid-1830s to approximately the 1860s. After that time, the use of the quality-rating terms Rich and Standard in a backmark fell out of favor. "Rich" referred to the use of gold gilt (which is now called gold-plating), and "Standard" was a quality level, meaning basically normal or average quality, lower than "Superior."

I should mention, the backmark term "Standard" originated in Britain. Although it was used on some very early US-made ONE-PIECE brass button backmarks, it is very rarely seen on US-made 2-piece buttons. So, the statistical odds favor your 2-piece button being a British product.

The 6-pointed floral or geometric emblem on your button is definitely not a Military type. Therefore, how your 1830s-60s civilian British-made button came to be lost in a Chilean desert will probably remain a mystery.

 

[Gene Mean]

Very nice button! Thanks for posting. Maybe a spectator button.

 

[Chile79]

Thank you so much for the information it is a fascinating subject. For a second I considered I may have found a military button from a profesional soldier such as the ones hired from the US to train Peruvian troops after the civil war. Anyways a British button would make complete sense! the salt pewter mines, which was the resource that caused and fueled the conflict, were mainly owned by British companies. There was a lot of British influence in that area at the time.

Saludos

 

[ANTIQUARIAN]

Welcome to Tnet from Toronto Chile79.
Not much more I can add to the info 'TheCannonballGuy' has already provided.

Except that this is a pretty common civilian clothing button, I find a lot of these here in Canada.
I love the condition, you can tell that it hasn't been lost in a cow pasture in Canada.

The examples I find are usually in rough shape from being urinated on for years.
Dave