New Finds

Basic fish-eye buttons

The term is an old one, and somewhat misleading, as they don’t look like fish eyes at all! They are also known as cat eye, which is a better description. Cat’s Eye buttons were described in Australian newspapers in 1884. However, most sewers and collectors know the term, ‘fish eye”. The Royal Alberta Museum in Canada has a pearl fish eye button they date to the late 1800s, but no-one remembers when or where the term was coined, as described in the following article from Just Buttons magazine in November 1963.

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