Tools and the Man

They look like evidence at some ghastly torture trial but actually these are tools my father used to make his glass buttons. The ends are wrapped to make them easier to hold and to protect his hand from the heat of the furnace and hot glass.

This is his glass cutter set with an industrial diamond which he would use to score the glass which was then cracked over a steel rule or the smaller pieces scored like butterscotch held in his loosely cupped hand and broken by bashing with pliers.  See Raw glass to button post

Here is a file used to imprint a texture onto the button.

These are other metal pieces he collected and would use to imprint designs or texture into the buttons. Belt buckles worked well as they have a bar across the back which he could hold with his tongs to press the decorated part into the molten glass.

Where he impressed the metal buckle and how hard it was pressed into the glass produced different effects.

Such a simple technique could produce such differing results from the masculine to the delicate.

Raw Glass to Button

I have just found a piece of raw glass in a box of buttons which shows how they were created.

It is Vitolite glass which is a structural glass widely used in the Twenties and Thirties to face buildings and to make luxurious bathroom finishes Think the Dorchester,the Odeon Cinemas, Art Deco.

By the time daddy was working with glass, just after the Second World war, this look was seriously unfashionable So nobody was buying the glass and the glass suppliers often had what s they had left piled up in the backyard without any hope of selling it and costing money to dispose of. My father would offer to take some and they would be glad to give it to him. So he was getting his raw material free, a born upcycler.

The glass is ridged on the back to take the fixative, the front face is smooth

This is the front face ready painted to create the button. Now it will go into the furnace and be pressed free hand. The ridges will melt back into the glass making it smooth on the back. The colour is taken over the thickness of the glass, and in this case he has  deliberately used raw brush strokes to create the effect 

Here is the finished button with its humorous "button holes " which of course aren't button holes at all as the button was sewed on by the metal shank glued to the back. The colour match is closer than is shown here, as this is distorted by the wonders of technology

This is the same button but from a differently painted "blank" 

The reason the blank is in the box of finished buttons is so that my father could remember how he had created the button. He would create the samples in the summer and quite often by the Winter when the orders came in he couldn't remember how he had made it. This would lead to delays while he tried to work out what he had done.

Experimental glass buttons from the Sixties

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These buttons are  from the Sixties, I have a soft spot for this era as I was a child and interested in my father's work, when the Sixties ended I was sixteen and by that time  more interested in myself.

The buttons are really experiments, he is seeing what he can make. They are probably made in the longueurs of summer when he would put the furnace on to make samples and have a bit of a play. In the summer he worried  whether he would get enough orders to stave off an overdraft the next year. In the summer he created the samples to go with the snippets of material sent to him for the coats and suit designs for the Winter Season.

• BUTTON ONE He bought his paints from Johnston Matthey by post, if he saw something new  he thought he could use he sent for a sample. He sent for some crackle glaze which you sprinkled on and it looked like glass dust fused to the surface. He's tried this on clear glass with a gold painted vertical slice. Not impressed,  he ground the face of the button so you get fragments of shine from the crackle and the gold on an otherwise mat surface.

• BUTTON TWO For this he used a piece of rod glass which he was always trying to work out how to use. He watched the glass makers who made glass rod animals and bought some glass to see if he could use it. He never really found the answer but this is him trying to use it.

• BUTTON THREE  This is clear glass with the colour painted onto the back. I think there must have been problems as there are very few of these but its a really pleasing result like little paper weights.

• BUTTON FOUR  He's made this by grinding across the face of the button

• BUTTON FIVE This is lovely, it was probably  made as a pendant piece. Its a clear glass sandwich  with a filling of sprinkled paint pigment. The air bubbles would be accidental but add to its interest.