300 (37)

272

Buttons

Most were for fastening garments; a few may be purely decorative.

Research into medieval buttons has until recently had to concentrate almost entirely on depictions in contemporary art, notably monumental sculptures and illuminated manu-scripts, and on evidence from documentary sources. This was because virtually no surviving examples were known. Scattered references to the few excavated buttons do not seem previous-ly to have been collated with the other evidence, and those which have been considered in detail by a dress historian (Nevinson 1977) datę from almost the end of the medieval period (see cloth buttons below).

The new close-fitting fashions for outer garments from the 13th century onwards (Nevinson 1977, 38), meant a widespread need for simple fasteners at the collar (a brooch might serve the same purpose here, see figs 158 & 176) and on the sleeves (cf Pinder 1952, nos. 43, 45 & 79), and by the middle of the 14th century a row of buttons down the length of the front of the outer tunic had become fashionable (fig 175). The next century’s morę complicated styles for clothing for the rich could use quite plain buttons to a very elaborate overall effect (as on the sleeve in Filedt-Kok 1985, 205 no. 106), though the simple functional use continued for all classes (ibid, 208 no. 108, 210 no. llOa, 214 no. 113), just as it does today. It has been claimed that the introduc-tion of buttons into England may be dated to about the 1330s (Newton 1980, 15-18). Buttons are depicted on sculptures in Germany which have been dated to the 1230s and have been described as the earliest evidence for buttons in Europę (White 1978, 238 & 273). The recent finds from London and elsewhere, together with other evidence, considerably expand and signifi-cantly alter this picture. Buttons for closing garments are known on an exotic Far-Eastem cos-tume introduced into Sweden as early as the 9th century (Arbman 1940, pl 93 no. 1, cf Blindheim et al. 1981, 280 & pl 35, 10d-C4312 for another metal example of similar datę from Kaupang in Norway). No continuity of usage in north-west

Europę has been established from these isolated late first-millenium finds. From the information now available, it seems likely that buttons were first introduced into Europę via trade routes from the East, but that they probably came into the repertoire of everyday dress in England and Continental Europę in the early 13th century.

A particular difficulty with the documentary evidence is the lack of precision in terminology. The main meaning of the contemporary term bouton, a lump, and its morę specific application to the bud of a plant, were extended to a rangę of decorative dress fittings of similar shape, not only buttons in the modem sense (Nevinson 1977, 38). By the middle of the 14th century it was apparently possible to use the derivative verb in the generalised sense of ‘to fasten’. Two garments are described in the Great Wardrobe accounts of 1343-44 as boutonata cum laqueis seńci et punctibus, ‘fastened with silken laces and points’ (Newton 1980, 25).

Although the knotted leather toggles in com-mon use from the late llth century onwards to fasten medieval shoes and boots in much the same way as the buttons described under this present heading (eg Grew and de Neergaard 1988, 20-23), are sometimes referred to by modem commentators as ‘buttons’, no contemporary use of this term for shoe fastenings has been traced until the late 15th century, and no metal buttons are known on shoes datable to the period considered in this volume Qune Swann, pers. comm.).

The excavated buttons described below can be divided into three major categories:

Cast buttons of medieval datę (nos. 1376-96, figs 178-79) are usually solid, either of lead/tin with integral shanks, or of bronze with separate, embedded wire shanks and a tin coating. They were produced in moulds (cf Bergman and Billberg 1976, 207 fig 151 top, for one element of a two-part 13th-century stone mould for 11 smali

175 Wooden figurę of Walter de Helyon showing

buttons on front of tunic and sleeves, from Much Marcie, Hereford and Worcester, c. 1360