Dorset Button

The name Dorset buttons comes from the county of Dorset, England where the craft was invented. The name was likely reinforced by the fact that the original button forms were made from the horn of the Dorset sheep. Both the female and male of this sheep breed had horns in the early days of button production, so the supply of horn was plentiful.

The history of buttons as a whole extends back thousands of years into human material history. The story of Dorset buttons by comparison is much more recent. 

In the early 1600s C.E., one Abraham Case was busy defending his home and country on mainland Europe during the 30 Year War, when he observed something interesting among his fellow soldiers. While in the muck, blood and death that is all wars, Case saw these men make do when they lost buttons from their uniforms. By stretching bits of cloth over small forms, which given the circumstances could have been anything, small stones, pieces of wood or metal, whatever was on hand, then stitched the end product onto their clothing. 

Once released from his military obligations, Case returned home to the Shaftesbury area of England. When a means to suppose himself and his new wife became necessary, his memories of those cloth covered buttons came back to him. Shaftesbury had an abundance of Dorset Horn sheep, a breed where both males and females had long curving horns. These became an integral part of Case’s new enterprise. 

Those horns, when cut into thin discs, provided the forms that the first cloth covered Dorest buttons were made from. The very tips of the horn were used to make High Tops, where a small piece of linen was stretched over the point, then kept in place with a web of stitches. These were used mostly for men’s waist coats. 

From the remaining cuts of the sheep horn, varying sizes of the Dorset knob were made. A low, convex button, made by adding a bit of padding over the hard disc, was also covered with cloth and secured in place with another web of stitches. 

The local market was very favorable for Case’s buttons. The demand grew to other markets and to meet demand he had to commission other families to start manufacturing these small money making fasteners. 

The business continued to build and expand through the rest of the 17th Century, with Case’s sons and grandsons taking up the management of the enterprise when their turns came. By the time his grandson Peter Case got into the business, the supply of Dorset sheep horn was declining. Spurred on by this supply challenge, he created a rust resistant metal that could be formed into thin gauge wire. This, when formed into rings, proved to be a suitable replacement for the horn. 

New jobs were created with the new metal. More members of the already commissioned buttony making families were employed. The children of women who had for generations been doing the fine needle work on the Dorset buttons were now occupied as Twisters, those who formed and cut the rings, Dippers, those that dipped the rings in solder to close the ends of the ring together, and Stringers, those that strung the rings together for easier distribution to the buttoners. Others from outside the industry were eventually tasked with these roles too, typically orphans and incarcerated individuals.

At its peak, in the late 1700s, more than 4000 women and children were employed in various aspects of the Dorset button industry, with several distribution/drop-off spots created for buttons to drop off finished products, receive payment, and pick up new supplies. The market demand had expanded into mainland Europe and even to the colonies of North America. 

As the materials used in Dorset buttons evolved, so did the styles and methods used to stitch them. Each buttony family had their own style of button. For instance, the cloth covered nature of the early High Top and Knobs remained an integral part of the Singleton style. Complete thread wrapped buttons were the foundation for other types like the classic cartwheel, basket weave, honeycomb and birds’ eye. The cloth covered varieties were commonly used for outer garments, with the thread wrapped types used for both undergarments and outerwear.

The fate of many other heritage crafts was similar for the Dorset button industry when the Industrial Revolution began. The exhibition of John Aston’s cloth covered button machine at the Crystal Palace during the Great Exhibition in 1851 marked the start of the end for the demand for handmade buttons. Over the next decade, the more expensive handcrafted buttons fell out of favor for the cheaper, machine made variety.