Can anyone ID this button???

[vayank54]

I dug this button at an old house site that dated from colonial times to the mid 1900's It is black glass with a brass shank. I believe it is from the 1890's but am not sure. I have shown this button to many people and no one has been able to tell me anything about it. It shows a lady lying beside what looks like a river or other body of water and someone in bushes peeking at her. Why the heck would someone make a button like this and who would wear it? For want of a better name I have been calling this my pervert button

 

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[SpectrumKevin]

Classic late Victorian black glass button, dates late 1800s-early 1900s. Most were made in Czechoslovakia. You should be able to find your exact button in the standard books on these, which I used to own but no longer. Queen Victoria set a fashion for these that lasted until the turn of the 20th c.

They have very little value in general, $2-5 typically. Vast quantities of these entered the market since discoveries were supposedly made in Czechoslovakia of originals. In fact many believe the new surge of material were actually made in modern times from period molds.


Here's a nice informational website. Google Victorian black glass buttons and you'll find scrillions of button sellers pushing these. If you can ID your precise button, it will be a number from that book, you can search and see if you got lucky and perhaps it is an uncommon one... probably not.

http://www.beadandbutton.com/bnb/default.aspx?c=a&id=3473

 

[vayank54]

SpectrumKevin, Thanks for your reply and posting the link. I'm checking it out. I know the glass buttons are common and not worth much. I was just wondering why one would have the design this one has. Seems kind of strange.

 

[BuckleBoy]

SpectrumKevin, Thanks for your reply and posting the link. I'm checking it out. I know the glass buttons are common and not worth much. I was just wondering why one would have the design this one has. Seems kind of strange.

The button's theme reminds me of some of the primitivist artworks from the same era--Gaugin in particular. That might help explain the exotic (at times erotic) subject nature of the button. Here are some examples:

http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/638/w500h420/CRI_62638.jpg


http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/110images/sl23_images/gauguin_2_tahitian_women.jpg


and especially Gaugin's painting entitled "contes barbares," which features a similar theme of two women in a natural environment being watched (spied upon?) by a man. (Such themes were not uncommon in Victorian era art--but the majority of the time in those cases, the women were caught in more mundane personal moments of reflection (like playing music or daydreaming) rather than more private situations.) Anyhow, here is the Gaugin:


http://digilander.libero.it/debibliotheca/Arte/nudo/02930250.JPG