Collector: Batches of buttons anchor Akua Lum-Reeser to history

Buttons.

Practical and necessary, but collectible?

Absolutely.

While many of us have memories of sorting through our grandmother’s or mother’s button boxes, Akua Lum-Reeser remembers attending meetings of the California State Button Society with her mother, Pauline Lum.

“My mother started collecting buttons when she was 39,” Lum-Reeser recalled. “She’s 92 now and has thousands of them.”

As her mother ages, she’s giving her children many of her shadow box button displays, and Lum-Reeser has about 10 of them at her South Hill home.

“My older brother remembers playing chess with me while we waited for her at button club meetings,” she said. “But I remember watching them trade buttons and stories. I paid attention.”

Her mother usually displayed her collection mounted on cardstock and entered them in competitions.

Unusual celluloid buttons are among the several types Lum collected.

Celluloid was the first man-made plastic, developed in the 1800s from cellulose, a derivative of wood and cotton fibers. Popular from the late 19th century through the 1920s, the hollow buttons can be opaque, transparent, or both and come in all shapes and sizes.

One of her mother’s displays featuring black and white celluloid coat buttons has a third-place ribbon and tag attached on the back of it from the California State Button Society.

On a wall in Lum-Reeser’s home, vintage metal overall buttons with names like Levi Strauss & Co, Union, Burlington and Finck Detroit Special gleam from a display case.

“My mother made this for my husband,” Lum-Reeser said. “He grew up on a farm in Albany, Oregon.”

Iridescent glass fasteners from the 1880s glimmer from another box, but those aren’t the oldest ones her mother collected.

Though Lum-Reeser doesn’t have any in her home, she said her mother specialized in Japanese Satsuma buttons from the 16th century.

“They were used to fasten on the Samurai swords,” she said.

In addition to display boxes, her mother fashioned her collections into bracelets. Lum-Reeser slid one over her wrist made from brightly-colored celluloid buttons.

“She made them so you can pop out the buttons and change the look.”

For a while, Lum collected metal buttons and made her daughter several chunky bracelets. The ornately designed items depict everything from cats to cowboy hats.

Smiling, Lum-Reeser said, “She went through a metal phase.”

While she admires the artistry and history of her mother’s collection, she thinks she’s among the minority.

“Kids aren’t collecting these,” she said. “They don’t understand the value.”

That’s why she made a promise to her mom.

“I told her that when she passed, I would find somewhere every year or so to display her collection, possibly in libraries, and that gave her a lot of happiness.”

Feeling the collection is complete, she doesn’t plan to add to it. Instead, she’s content to be its caretaker.

“I love having authentic things that have memory behind them,” Lum-Reeser said, turning a button bracelet in her hands. “This anchors me to my history.”