Every year on November 16, an unusual holiday is celebrated – World Button Day, which was founded back in 1938 by the American organization National Button Society.

Previously, buttons served people not so much to fasten clothes, but as a luxury item, which, moreover, carried a certain semantic meaning, so the production of buttons was treated with all responsibility and creativity.

Nowadays, buttons are actively collected, the largest collections are kept in museums in the USA, Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden. The most significant collection belongs to the city of New Jersey (approximately 100 thousand buttons), and the private collection belongs to Stevens from America.

Interesting Facts

• The first buttons were found during the excavations of ancient Rome. Scientists date some specimens to the third millennium BC. No less old buttons made from the shells of small shells, bones, metal ingots and stones were found by archaeologists in the Indus River valley.
• Initially, buttons were used as a decoration that indicated the high social or financial status of the owner. In Ancient Russia, they were considered amulets.
• People who collect buttons are called phyllobutonists. The first organization appeared in 1939 in Chicago. And the Chinese Bo Jinfang, having collected more than 110 thousand buttons in his collection, was able to enter the Guinness Book of Records.
• In the museum of buttons in Switzerland, you can see not only more than 40 thousand copies, but also such things as a hearse, a coffin or a toilet, decorated with colorful round buttons.
• Button monuments were erected in Montreal, Kyiv, New York and some other cities. And there is even a monument to a split button in Philadelphia.