I knew as soon as I saw the small rusted hooks with the lovely handles that they were mine. No one else at the auction house would bid on such dirty items.
More than a dozen hooks were lying atop one another on a blue Willow plate on the auction table. Two tables down were more of them, along with some manicure tools.
I’d seen them often at auction before, and always thought they had something to do with sewing. They always had nice bone or celluloid handles attached to long metal prongs with a hook at the end.
It was with utter surprise that I learned their real name and real use: button hooks for pulling buttons through button holes.
They were used extensively during the latter part of the Victorian period when men and women wore over-the-ankle shoes and boots that buttoned up the side. If you’ve seen any old pictures of shoes from that time, you’ll remember that they were tight at the ankle. So, you can imagine the chore of trying to button them.
I looked past the rusted metal prongs on the button hooks at auction and focused on the handles. Several were cream-colored bone, two had the words “French ivory” and “ivory” engraved on them, but my research showed that they were actually the synthetic plastic celluloid. Another had light and dark brown tones, another was green and brown celluloid (with a matching nail tool), another was mother of pearl. Two metal ones advertised shoe stores in Philadelphia.
These were vintage button hooks but there was no way to tell how old they were.
The lots included a large array of bone crochet hooks and a comb-like item I could not identify, a metal item that resembled scissors with a rooster in the middle, holes at the bottom for fingers and circular pieces at the top. The open piece at the top looked like it could have been a magnifying glass (the glass was missing) and the solid piece could’ve been its cover. The lot also included nail tools and several letter openers.
For me, the prize was the button hooks. I cleaned them, and decided to try one out. First, I had to find a blouse with buttons because who wears blouses anymore. I slid the button hook through the button hole and around a button (it didn’t slide around the button too easily so I maneuvered it with my hand) and pulled it through. No fumbling with the button. It was easy. Then I tried another, not so easy, a little fumbling, and then another, not so easy again. I guess it takes practice.
Here’s how it was actually done, according to Christopher Proudlove in an article on the website of the Buttonhook Society:
In use, the prong was inserted through the buttonhole and the hook positioned around the shank of the button. A swift tug and a deft twist of the wrist and the button was pulled easily into place to do its duty.
I could not imagine trying to button shoes with it.
Button hooks were pretty common in the 1890s and were widely used until around 1915, according to the Buttonhook Society website, even though they go back at least a century or more earlier. Anyone who wore shoes, stiff boots, jackets, gloves and even corsets apparently used them. They came in all sizes and shapes, and were made of materials ranging from silver to abalone shell.
Some, called “trench art,” were made from metal picked up off battlefields during World War I. Many businesses used them for advertising, like the ones in the lot I bought that advertised Forster’s Boot and Shoes and Sharpless Bros. Shoes, which no longer exist.
The hooks could be as long as a foot or more to prevent a person from having to bend over to fasten boots or as small as a little finger to be carried in a purse, according to the website.
As people traveled more, the hooks were included in manicure, shaving, dresser and traveling sets, according to the Buttonhook Society site. A dresser set could consist of a “manicure knife, shoe horn, letter opener, cuticle knife, scissors, small bottles, and other items set in a specially fitted case.”
Maybe that’s why my auction lots contained several manicure, nail tools and letter openers. They were likely part of dresser sets.
Button hooks are apparently collectible, don’t cost a lot of money and are easy to store. As Proudlove rightly noted, “you could spend a lifetime collecting button hooks and fit them all in a suitcase.”
Unsurprisingly, I found an association of button hook collectors, the Buttonhook Society based in England, that offered tons of information on collecting, fakes, how to display your collection, early articles on button hooks (including one on how to clean rust: cover with oil or grease, let set for a few days, rub with ammonia). It also included photos from its exhibition of amazingly beautiful hooks, not the sort I come across at auctions. There is also a display from the Bedford Museum in England. Here are more nice photos, including one that shows how they were used.
It seemed that the lot of button hooks I got for $5 each at auction are among the more common ones. None are silver and none have fancy handles. But learning about them, though, was a fascinating expedition.
