The pinback buttons I spotted in the glass auction case were new to me. I’d seen buttons of political candidates, civil rights campaigns and cartoon characters, but I had never come across any with the faces of private people.
Some of the buttons were rimless, and a few were encased in gold-plated frames. All were in plastic sleeves for protection.
They were real photos of men, women and children from a different era, so I was obviously curious about them. I was also interested because the real photos I had previously seen at auction were on postcards.
Googling, I found magazine ads for companies – two of them based in Boston – selling the buttons for 10 cents back in 1900 and 1905. All you had to do was send in a photo of yourself, and the company would put your lovely face on a pinback button and return both the photo and your new button.
One company offered a bonus: If you bought five buttons, it would send you one in a metal frame with a small easel on the back. The other company was selling the button as jewelry, calling it a “rimless brooch” rather than what it was and looked like: a pinback button.
The first advertising buttons date back to George Washington, whose supporters wore metal pins with the slogan “Long live the President” along with his initials during his inauguration. The buttons had a shank on the back that was sewn to a lapel, or hung on a string and worn as a pendant. Abraham Lincoln became the first president to use his own image on a campaign button.
Pins were added to the back of buttons in the 1890s after a patent was filed by a Newark, NJ, company called Whitehead and Hoag (whose name I’ve seen on the backs of several vintage buttons). The company created and patented celluloid buttons with pinbacks, and became the largest manufacturer of advertising buttons and other novelties. The front of the button bore the image covered by a celluloid film to protect it and the back was a metal pin for fastening it.
The Kellogg company in the 1940s placed pinback buttons of cartoon characters as a premium inside its Pep cereal.
The buttons at auction were made by both Whitehead & Hoag, based in Newark, NJ, and W.R. Bowles company of Hopkinsville, KY. Bowles owned a photography studio. Also included was an advertising button for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes, which produced buttons featuring famous baseball players, female theater and movie stars, and flags of various countries. These were not the only button-makers over the years.
Photos of people were not the only thing on buttons. I found a photo of a fire hose company in Poughkeepsie, NY, on eBay, which was said to be from 1900; Boston Red Sox players from 1903, and one of a couple said to be from the 1920s, also being sold on eBay.
Here are more of the real photo pinbacks:
