Button
Unknown Artist
1850
Medium
[no medium available]
Classification
Button
Culture
British
Department
Costume Institute
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
From the Hanna S. Kohn Collection, 1951
Accession Number
50.231.499–.500
Tags
Art Historical Context
This charming 1850 British button, housed in the Metropolitan Museum of's Costume Institute, offers a glimpse into Victorian-era accessories. Titled simply *Button* and created by an unknown artist, it features of men and women in profile, as suggested by its tags. Such decorative buttons were more than functional fasteners; they served as miniature canvases for personal expression, adorning garments like waistcoats, dresses, and coats. In the mid-19th, Britain's industrial boom made intricate buttons affordable yet aspirational, blending craftsmanship with emerging mass production techniques...