🔎 UNIDENTIFIED What date and origin of this button?

cahills9

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Apr 8, 2022
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TheCannonballGuy

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Most often, when a brass 1-piece flatbutton's backmark is written in ONLY raised markings, and has a British Royal crown (signifying British manufacture), it dates from about 1790 to 1812... for four reasons. First the War Of 1812 stopped British imports into the US. Second, for about ten years (1815-25) after the end of that war, patriotic Americans boycotted British-made products. Third, by 1825, the infant American button-making industry had become capable of mass-producing enough buttons to supply the demand from the clothing-making industry, thereby greatly reducing the need to import buttons from Britian. Fourth, around 1835, the advent of INEXPENSIVE (because they were machine-made) 2-piece brass buttons with beautiful "ornate" emblems caused plain-front flatbuttons to rapidly fall out of favor with the public. In summary... yes, there's a chance your button was made during 1825-35, but the statistical odds favor it being from the earlier time-period.
 

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cahills9

Jr. Member
Apr 8, 2022
64
310
Most often, when a brass 1-piece flatbutton's backmark is written in ONLY raised markings, and has a British Royal crown (signifying British manufacture), it dates from about 1790 to 1812... for three reasons. First the War Of 1812 stopped British imports into the US. Second, for about ten years (1815-25) after the end of that war, patriotic Americans boycotted British-made products. Third, by 1825, the infant American button-making industry had become capable of mass-producing enough buttons to supply the demand from the clothing-making industry, thereby greatly reducing the need to import buttons from Britian. Fourth, around 1835, the advent of INEXPENSIVE (because they were machine-made) 2-piece brass buttons with beautiful "ornate" emblems caused plain-front flatbuttons to rapidly fall out of favor with the public. In summary... yes, there's a chance your button was made during 1825-35, the statistical odds favor it being from the early time-period.
Thank you so much. This is more than I could have expected and I learned a lot! Very much appreciated. Take care
 

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