While searching through an old sewing basket the other day, I came across these old linen buttons. I've had them for many years and they are not unfamiliar; usually I simply admire the packaging and place them back, but this day, I took a proper look at them. I'd guess they are Victorian in age, or at the latest, Edwardian. Most of the buttons are still there, unused. They have a robust metal plug in the centre, because after all, they were almost certainly everyday shirt buttons and had to be hard-wearing.
I looked more closely and realised that they were all neatly blanket stitched around the edge - and such tiny stitches. Although this shouldn't have been a surprise, because the packet does proudly boast 'hand-made' on the cover. But hand made by whom? As an everyday item, they would have been made in their thousands - mass produced, but not by a machine. I have a feeling that whoever made these would have been in much need of the pitifully low wage that would have been paid for the creation of these 'Superior Quality' buttons.
Those painstaking little stitches have been preying on my mind as I wonder - who made them? I think it's safe to assume that this would have been 'women's work' or even a task for children in those days. Were they paid by the hundred? Per packet? How many of these innocuous buttons would have had to be stitched, in order to earn enough for a loaf of bread? Was anything paid at all? After all, workhouses and homes for 'bad girls' or single mothers were very much a feature for poor people back then, often perceived as feckless and undeserving. Perhaps sewing these was a required unpaid task to stop the 'Devil making work for idle hands'.
Let's not forget that linen frays quite badly, especially at this size, so careful handling and concentration would have been required.
I think those industrious hands and
fingers would have been quite sore at the end of a day's work, whoever
was making them. So I put the packet back in the old basket
where they live, with mixed feelings and sent a thought out to the anonymous sewer, who stitched these workaday buttons so beautifully, for so little reward.
