Many people remember their mother or grandmother's prized "button box". Women carefully stored buttons cut off clothes no longer able to be worn to be available for re-purposing on newly sewn homemade items of clothing.

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Buttons, however, are a design essential – not just a way of keeping a shirt fastened or a pair of trousers from falling down.

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As decorative and functional items, buttons were made of countless materials from bone and ivory, to wood and a variety of metals and, later, out of plastics and substances like Bakelite and Celluloid.

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Buttons can be simple disks or highly carved or molded into exotic designs and whimsical shapes.

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Whatever your style and fancy – there are buttons you'd enjoy collecting or viewing!