At the 70th Anniversary of the New Hampshire State Button Society, judges Sharon Evans, of Wentworth, N.H., left, Shirley Richardson, of Laconia, N.H., and Zelda LaVanway, of Fayston, Vt., pore over cards of buttons on Saturday, April 23, 2022, in Lebanon, N.H. The women were judging circular buttons with squares in them. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Valley News photographs — Jennifer Hauck

Katharine "Kit" Carleton Hartshorn, of Warren, Vt., crafted owls out of buttons. Hartshorn's work was on display at the 70th Anniversary of the New Hampshire State Button Society, on Saturday, April 23, 2022, in Lebanon, N.H. She died in 2007. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Jennifer Hauck

Bob Milburn, of Shirley, Mass., looks through a "poke box" at the 70th Anniversary of the New Hampshire State Button Society, on Saturday, April 23, 2022, in Lebanon, N.H. "It's like mining for gold." Milburn laughed. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Lorraine Goodman, of Canaan, N.H., and Marie Elwyn, of Shirley, Mass., greet one another at the 70th Anniversary of the New Hampshire State Button Society, on Saturday, April 23, 2022, in Lebanon, N.H. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Valley News photographs — Jennifer Hauck

LEBANON — While to some, buttons may seem like a simple tool to hold clothing together, they contain many more wonders for the approximately 40 members of the New Hampshire State Button Society.

“The more I learn, the more fascinating they become,” Shirley Richardson, the society’s president from Laconia, N.H., said while seated at a table inside the First Congregational Church of Lebanon on Saturday during an event to celebrate the society’s 70th anniversary.

Richardson said her favorite buttons include those from the “Gay Nineties” — the 1890s, that is. They are made of metal and hold gemstones in the center. She also likes “tin-type” buttons that date back to the Civil War era. They often hold pictures of soldiers’ wives or mothers. She said she finds those “fascinating, historically.”

Saturday’s gathering, hosted by the Twin Valley Button Club, marked the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit that the society was able to get together. The group typically meets three times a year, hosted once annually by each of the state’s three button clubs. Button collecting has become “kind of an older person’s hobby,” Richardson said, but the tradition got its start among housewives a few generations ago. It gave them an excuse to get out and visit with friends.

Tim Kennedy, of Pelham, N.H., said he thinks of the origins of the button society as being “like the Tupperware party of the (19)50s.”

Kennedy, who was masked like all the attendees, stood behind a table containing boxes of his late wife’s button collection that he was attempting to sell. He said the collection had its roots in some buttons he inherited that originally belonged to his great-grandmother, who lived in Epping, N.H.

Kennedy said he most likes work buttons such as those that come from the top of a pair of jeans and include the manufacturer’s name. While some companies such as Carhartt are still around, many aren’t.

“It’s amazing the number of companies,” he said.

He also said that buttons can come in “any material you can think of,” including bone, antler, rubber and celluloid, a type of plastic. Buttons can be worth more than $1,000, depending on the type of material and the button’s history, he said.

Buttons also can be made into works of art, as a display located in another part of the room illustrated. It featured vests and wall-hangings made by the late Kit Hartshorn, of Warren, Vt. Hartshorn decorated with buttons, creating designs that looked like owls.

“She never sat still,” Hartshorn’s daughter, Rachel McCuin, said of her mother.

In another corner of the room, a group of the society’s members sat huddled over 8½-by-11-inch sheets of paper decorated with buttons. The judges were tasked with evaluating the buttons according to standards put forth in the National Button Society Blue Book.

For example, one competition required that the clubs include buttons representing New Hampshire, including five animals, five objects, five plants and five outdoor activities. The winning sheet included a broader variety: a fruit, a grain, a flower, a seed and a tree, Antrim, N.H., resident Thelma Nichols, the president of the Twin Valley Button Club, said. The other sheet had some overlap in the types of plants.

Though in-person button meetings have been on hiatus “like everybody else,” Nichols said, she’s continued to interact with button aficionados from around the country and the world via Zoom in the interim. She said she’d like to get some younger people involved. “We are an aging group,” she said.

South Royalton resident Betty Cross, who will soon turn 88, said she’s been a Twin Valley Button Club member since 1992. She had inherited some buttons from her grandmother and wanted to know more about them. She’s learned a lot about history and materials over the decades, but she said, “I’ve only scratched the surface. There’s so much to know.”

More information about the New Hampshire State Button Society is online at: nhstatebuttonsociety.org.

Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.

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