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The Button in Museum and Shop

The history of the button goes back to the Bronze Age. The buttons use changed from decorative to functional to serving both purposes at the same time. Once serving as a status symbol for French and British royalty the contemporary button plays many roles. Even though zippers and Velcro have taken over a part of the buttons role as the main fastener one is still hard pressed to find a shirt or pair of jeans that does not utilise buttons. Apart from that the button plays a large role in the new surging craft and d.i.y movement proven by the many tutorials featuring buttons found on websites such as crafster.org. Buttons are used not only to decorate clothing but are also made into objects such as earrings as found in local Edinburgh shop; Cool Joes

But the button is at certain places also taken outside the realm or commerce and viewed not as an utilitarian object but as an object an sich. When visiting the National

Museum of Schotland, situated in the centre of Edinburgh, a pair of buttons can be detected displayed without the clothing they were once attached to. This specific pair of buttons was ,according to the explanatory text next to the display case, once worn by members of a special government department which maintained the network of roads and bridges build throughout Scotland and were given to the museum by William Tawse, a Scottish civil engeneering company still bears his name. The objects which are displayed along with the two buttons do not seem to relate at first sight as can be seen on the picture below. They do all appear to originate from the same period in time.

The museum seems to aim for an audience with an interest in Scotland and the material culture produced in Scotland. Which is illustrated by permanent exhibitions titled; Scotland transformed and Scotland, a changing nation.

The stand used for displaying the buttons is very similar looking to one used in the commercial realm of shops. The use of the similar display materials is not so unlikely according to Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska authors of the book ‘The value of things’ who say that stores are being encouraged to reinvent themselves as places in which the ruthless forces of commerce are obscured behind an image of public service and spectacle. They point out that product displays translate into changing ‘exhibitions’ as everything is cloaked in a subtle nostalgia, repositioning the store a a tourist destination akin to other cultural sites. Thus while shops are trying to emulate museums, the museum finds itself having to aggressively market and licence their collections, histories and buildings as a ‘brand’. On a basic level one could see both museums as well as shops as spaces in which items are displayed. The intention may differ, either to raise interest and educate or to sell, but the methods are similar. Although one can argue that one of the intentions of the museum is also to make a profit through sales as most museums nowadays have a museum shop in the same building as the collection. So by visiting the museum space the visitor can acquire two things according to Cummings and Lewandowska namely knowledge as well as material; souvenirs. The object obtained is suffused with nostalgia and the motivation of securing a personal reminder.

The button as seen in the National Museum of Scotland does not represent all buttons nor does it give us an insight in button making or the role of the button in history it does however illustrate the human involvement in an important part of Scottish history and with that perhaps it has once again taken on it utilitarian role although not in the function it was originally fashioned for.