Accession No. RARE.2024.0078: Purchased, 2018 April
[identification of item], Celluloid Buttons with Portraits of Women, Likely Produced by Dickins & Jones Department Store (London, England), SPEC.RARE.MMS.0397, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University
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Processed by: David Mezick, November 2024; Finding aid written by: David Mezick, November 2024
Photograph buttons are buttons that have photographs on them. They were popular in England and the United States from around 1900 to the 1920s as people wanted new and different ways to display family pictures. Larger photograph buttons, which were often called medallions, were meant to be displayed in people’s homes. Some smaller buttons were designed to be attached to a person’s clothing, especially by a pin. During this period, several companies manufactured and sold photograph buttons and the materials to make them.
Dickins & Jones was a department store in London, England, which operated at its Regent Street location from 1835 until 2006. Originally known as Dickins, Smith & Stevens, the store became Dickins & Jones in 1856.
The Celluloid Buttons with Portraits of Women, Likely Produced by Dickins & Jones Department Store (London, England), dated circa 1906, contains four celluloid buttons with portrait photographs of women on them. The photographs are carbon prints that were either transferred onto the surface of the celluloid buttons or printed directly on that surface, and then hand colored. The buttons are the kind that are sewn onto clothing to be used as fasteners. Also included is a box for the buttons, which is from the Dickins & Jones department store in London, England.