EUGENE, Ore. — A rich hoard of family history might be hidden in Mason jars and cookie tins that are full of buttons. They might include buttons from wedding gowns, uniforms or the dress a child wore on her first day of school. Sandi Olsen of rural Lane County calls such caches of buttons “accidental collections.” They reflect bygone days when thrifty homemakers snipped and saved buttons from garments that were headed for the rag bin.
But Olsen sees buttons as far more than a way to fasten shirts or add fashion flair to a sweater.
“They’re art, in miniature,” she said.
They’re also her passion, and one that she would like more people to discover. For more than 40 years, she has collected buttons methodically, eclectically — and almost daily.
Her buttons are wooden, ceramic, bone, cloth, metal, glass, enamel, handmade, factory-made, old, new, local and global. They range from dazzling 18th-century showpieces larger than dollar coins to tiny seed pearl buttons that might adorn an infant’s christening gown.
Many of them are neatly affixed to sheets of paper, with 25 to 50 a sheet. The paper sheets are stored in plastic sleeves and kept in deep, oak wall filing cabinets, portable storage units, boxes and bowls in Olsen’s two-room hobby suite.
Does she have thousands of buttons?
A little smile plays across Olsen’s lips in reply.
Tens of thousands?
She raises an eyebrow, and husband Jack, a retired teacher and rhododendron hybridist, breaks in confidently.
“I’d say she has a million in here,” he said. “Every day, another package arrives.”
The soft-spoken Sandi Olsen does not contradict him. Her smile grows imperceptibly.
“I’ve never been able to specialize,” she explains.
With the eye of a born artist, she arranges patterns and themes of buttons into frames, many of them displayed on the walls of her house. Modestly tucked behind those frames are the blue and red ribbons she’s won for artistically showcasing a particular theme, material or era, in buttons.
Her collection is massive and organized.
On a recent afternoon, she knew exactly where to find the red, white and blue binder containing her first button purchase: commemorative buttons to mark the nation’s 1976 bicentennial celebration.
Soon afterward, she joined the Oregon Button Society.
“I was the baby of the club,” she said. “Now I’m its oldest member.”
For the past 10 years, she has been the president of the Eugene Button Club, whose members live throughout Lane County. They are a small but dedicated group who celebrate the virtually infinite varieties of buttons that evolved more than 1,000 years ago from those first practical objects that kept clothes securely fastened against the elements.
As collectibles go, buttons are on the humble side, compared to coins or stamps.
For instance, the British Guiana one-cent Black on Magenta stamp — once in the collection of a 12-year-old boy — sold in 2014 for a record $9.5 million.
The most valuable button known in the United States is a George Washington inaugural button, which can fetch several thousand dollars. Olsen does not own the original, but she has a brass reproduction.
The real treasure in button collecting, she said, is the collateral education it provides in history, art, fashion and design.
When asked to show her favorite button, she grows solemn as she pulls out a set of engraved metal buttons. They were issued to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack.
The meaning behind the buttons makes them valuable, she said, but button collecting in general is very much a “value-in-the-eye-of-the beholder” sort of hobby.
Olsen and the other members of the Oregon Button Society would like more people to discover the hobby of button collection and display.
