Uniform buttons within the context of the collection of the Waldes Museum of Buttons and Fasteners

Kateřina Hrušková

doi:10.46284/mkd.2020.8.4.1

Abstract

The study deals with uniform buttons in the collection of the Waldes Museum of Buttons and Fasteners in Prague-Vršovice, which was founded at the initiative of Prague industrialist and philanthropist Jindřich Waldes. Over the course of the museum’s existence, from 1916 to 1945, the collection came to include more than 350 uniform buttons. This study tries to capture the significance of the collection at the Waldes Museum, both as exhibits in themselves, and as study material connected with the museum’s publication work or the building of a specialised archive and library on the other. It also presents selected exhibits from the collection in question, together with other associated objects and specialised materials. The study draws on expert consideration of the preserved collection, original publications and materials from the Waldes Museum Archive and specialised literature.

Highlights

Uniform buttons – that is, buttons made for a specific uniform – were, and still are, popular and highly-specific collectors’ items that have been included to a greater or lesser extent in many a private and public collection
This study deals with the topic of uniform buttons within the context of that collection and institution, and the activities initiated by Jindřich Waldes – the creation of the collection, the initiative to create a collection of works on the button and the activities of the museum
Uniform buttons are a sizeable part of the collection to have been preserved from the Waldes Museum – Collection of Clothing Fasteners

Summary

Introduction

Uniform buttons – that is, buttons made for a specific uniform – were, and still are, popular and highly-specific collectors’ items that have been included to a greater or lesser extent in many a private and public collection. The book was never published, but one copy of the manuscript is stored in the Waldes Museum Archive In this manuscript, one chapter in this unique work looks at the uniform button. He wrote the following about the publication in his text “Moje museum” (My museum): “The material gathered so far has been provided with thorough and objective criticism and the proposals and stimuli that reached me on this occasion led me to the decision not to publish this monography in the format originally intended”.25 As his reasons, Waldes cited the aim to deal with the subject-matter for regions that had not until been researched on account of the ongoing wartime conflict, and a desire to expand the publication as a whole with the contribution of other experts.

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