{"id":96576,"date":"2021-06-03T08:42:11","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T13:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=96576"},"modified":"2021-06-03T08:42:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T13:42:11","slug":"shells-tell-the-story-of-long-gone-button-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/shells-tell-the-story-of-long-gone-button-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Shells tell the story of long-gone button industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Marisa Sloan<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p>EDGEWATER, Md. \u2014 The <a href=\"https:\/\/serc.si.edu\/\">Smithsonian Environmental Research Center\u2019s<\/a> Environmental Archaeology Laboratory is easy to miss, hidden within a basement on the sprawling 2,650-acre campus. Those who manage to find it can expect to be greeted by an eclectic spread: microscopes, coffee mugs, miniature dinosaurs and shelves full of both books and animal bones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the way, you don\u2019t have any cell service here,\u201d warned Linda Perkins, who has worked at the lab as a citizen scientist for five years. \u201cIf you need to make a call, I can show you how to get out the back door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When I arrived, Perkins was sifting through trays of broken cone top shells excavated from the waste piles of a button factory in the small community of Denton, Maryland. Throughout the 19<sup>th<\/sup> and early 20<sup>th<\/sup> centuries, mother-of-pearl buttons \u2014 cut out of shells left behind by sea snails and treated in chemical baths \u2014 were popular for their strength and attractive sheen. The Denton factory, called simply \u201cthe button factory\u201d by residents, was constructed in 1933 and transformed shells into buttons until its closure in 1996.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it\u2019s not the age that matters for us,\u201d said archaeologist Jim Gibb, head of the lab. \u201cIt\u2019s the process, different gender roles, involved labor relations and rural electrification. [There are] all kinds of different themes in American history that crosscut on these things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Environmental archaeologists study how humans changed ecosystems in the past and adapted to those changes. Sometimes, lessons learned in the past provide valuable insight for present day issues, such as those associated with climate change. At SERC, Gibb and his team of citizen scientists are interested in uncovering how the button industry impacted the local ecosystem and shaped the lives of the community that hosted it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_96580\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96580\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-96580\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_144500442-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Cardboard boxes filled with artifacts.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_144500442-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_144500442-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_144500442-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_144500442.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-96580\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hundreds of cardboard boxes, filled with artifacts ranging from tobacco pipes and plastic to bullets and bottles, lie in a storage room down the hall from the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory. (Marisa Sloan\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Surviving factory machinery provides clues to the button-making process. Workers first soaked shells to soften them and remove the smell of the sea, then drilled button-shaped \u201cblanks\u201d from the undersides using a lathe fitted with a tubular saw. Various other machines then sanded the ends of each finished blank to silky smoothness, sorted them by size and sliced them into uniform thickness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey hold the shell in one hand and advance this high-speed, tubular saw that drills a hole, [then] they retract it,\u201d Gibb said. \u201cThere\u2019s a mechanism that pops the blank out, and they go on to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After rummaging through some drawers, he located an old tubular saw \u2014 a hollow, metal tube approximately the length of a pinky finger and as wide as a typical button. The circular ends are cut into intricate zigzags that are surprisingly sharp, even decades after use.<\/p>\n<p>Workers discarded trimmings of the process in the yard near the factory\u2019s buildings, sometimes even using them <a href=\"https:\/\/mht.maryland.gov\/secure\/medusa\/PDF\/Caroline\/CAR-308.pdf\">to pave Denton&#8217;s parking lots and alleys<\/a> or increase the fertility of agricultural soil. During their research, <a href=\"https:\/\/orb.binghamton.edu\/neha\/vol47\/iss1\/3\/\">SERC scientists recovered<\/a> shells imported from around the world: black abalone from the eastern Pacific Ocean, yellow sandshell from the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, pearl oyster and cone top shell from the south Pacific, and toothed top shell from the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>The findings hint at a local species unsuitable for button-making, complicating the question of shell sourcing and the role of the Denton community in the worldwide manufacturing network of the time.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_96581\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96581\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-96581\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_153637591-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Citizen scientist Linda Perkins uses a digital caliper to measure the diameter of each cone top shell.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_153637591-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_153637591-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_153637591-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/PXL_20210505_153637591.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-96581\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Citizen scientist Linda Perkins uses a digital caliper \u2014 or, as she calls it with a shrug, a \u201cmeasurer\u201d \u2014 to measure the diameter of each cone top shell as well as the heights of their whorls. These shells possess only three or four whorls, but untouched shells have as many as six. (Marisa Sloan\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The introduction of cheaper, plastic buttons drove most mother-of-pearl button shops out of business in the 1950s, and the popularity of bigger, brighter colored buttons in the psychedelic 1960s was the metaphorical nail in the coffin. Only a select few shops were able to adapt by occupying a niche role within the industry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe last shop owner in Maryland was doing specialty work with Barbie dolls and sequined performance costumes for Elvis Presley,\u201d Gibb said, referring to the Martinek plant on Elliott Island that closed in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to follow in the fashionable footsteps of Barbie and the \u201cKing of Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll,\u201d look no further than Etsy, a popular online marketplace that specializes in handmade and vintage items. A simple search for mother-of-pearl buttons brings up over 9,000 results.<\/p>\n<p><i>Marisa Sloan is a health, environment and science reporter at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sloan_marisa\"><i>@sloan_marisa.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Marisa Sloan Medill Reports EDGEWATER, Md. \u2014 The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center\u2019s Environmental Archaeology Laboratory is easy to miss, hidden within a basement on the sprawling 2,650-acre campus. Those who manage to find it can expect to be greeted by an eclectic spread: microscopes, coffee mugs, miniature dinosaurs and shelves full of both books [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":96577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[452,29,5092],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-chicago","category-health-and-science","category-spring-2021"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Shells tell the story of long-gone button industry - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/shells-tell-the-story-of-long-gone-button-industry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shells tell the story of long-gone button industry - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Marisa Sloan Medill Reports EDGEWATER, Md. \u2014 The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center\u2019s Environmental Archaeology Laboratory is easy to miss, hidden within a basement on the sprawling 2,650-acre campus. 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For decades, their inner iridescent coating, called nacre, was valued for mother-of-pearl buttons. 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