Check Out Czech Glass Buttons
The precious gems of the button world
Rooting through the sewing paraphernalia my aunt Dorothy left me when she died, I found eleven buttons clustered on a turquoise thread. Like other things in life, at first, I underestimated them. Eleven black plastic buttons. Then I looked closer. No, they were glass, not plastic, and garnet red, not black. Finely detailed in a floral geometric pattern, traces of a gold wash still glittered. One of the original dozen never made it through the years or had been purloined to another purpose.
Deep in the crevices, nooks, and crannies of my brain I found and dredged up a vision from middle school. Mr. Craycraft, my teacher, and mentor from seventh through twelfth grade, stood at the blackboard once again, grinning like Alice’s cat, and swinging a yardstick to etch his knowledge into our young minds. Along with the mental picture of Dean Craycraft in a tan corduroy three-piece suit hollering “People…people…people” to get our hormone-drenched attention was a factoid: Czechoslovakia — a country since disbanded into the Czech Republic and Slovakia — was envied by the Nazis for their juicy resources. One of their exports was glass, made from these resources. Sometimes…
