What happened to our
jewelry quality blazer button collection?

Of course there were two sizes to the stampings once they became buttons. One size was for the front of a blazer, and one for the sleeve. Both sizes were made from the same stamping size – the size of the small button – but for the coat button, the small stamping was soldered into a bezel to create the larger button size.

There was a great deal of skill in the work of producing these buttons. All were made in what is now the fashionable Flatiron district, around 23rd Street in Manhattan, and was then all lofts and contract workers, mostly natives of Puerto Rico.

Ben Silver never thought he would develop that decorative arts button into a business of its own, but by the time he died, he had created dies for over 500 schools. Ivy league schools, of course, selling to their bookstores and alumni associations, and Big Ten schools, and small regional schools, and prep schools. A set of 7 buttons – four sleeve and 3 coat, was presented in a plastic box that had the words “Blazer Buttons with your school crest” on the cover. When we took over the business, we switched from plastic to velvet boxes, and created a blazer button catalog to sell direct to the public.

So what changed?

First, it was a serious craftsman’s art with fewer and fewer craftsmen. Secondly, the contractors who hired those people began to die. In the course of ten years, Ben’s original contractor died, his son took over and died, his cousins took over and died, there were fewer people to take over and fewer people with the skills required.

Secondly, laws changed and it became unlawful to have the run off that was created by the plating process in NYC, and with so few people left in the business, most retired.