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A Study of Function and Design Through Analysis of United States Patents 1865-1930
A tool for every task. This is not a difficult concept for us to imagine given the myriad tools that exist today. However, it was no different one hundred fifty years ago. In fact, small tools existed for purposes we wouldn't even think to consider today. It is hard to imagine, for example, a tool specifically used to assist in fastening buttons. Yet not only did this tool exist, it was used daily by adults and children to ease the chore of buttoning and unbuttoning garments such as collars, cuffs, gloves, shirts, dresses, shoes, and boots. This study sheds light on this long-forgotten small tool once considered an essential garment tool, by examining button hook styles from 1865 to 1980-the time period of the tool's common usage. In addition to examination of button hooks manufactured during this time period, a variety of primary records were researched to glean more information on this unique tool. Newspaper advertisements shed light on the types and locations of merchants offering this product for sale. Manufacturers' catalogs illustrated the range of models available for sale. Of greatest assistance, however, were records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. By studying patents issued for button hooks, the tool could be examined in the context of the inventors' intent for the pattern, function, and materials used in manufacture of the implement.
What is a Button Hook?
A patent issued in 1876 concisely defined a button hook as "...an instrument to facilitate the buttoning of shoes, gloves, and like purposes..." 1 For the purpose of this discussion, the term button hook is used as an inclusive term to describe glove-button hooks, shoe-button hooks, fasteners, or buttoners used to facilitate the buttoning and unbuttoning of clothing and footwear garments (Figure 1 ).
Although this study begins with a discussion of United States patents of the mid-nineteenth century, button hooks were a known implement centuries before then. A French and English dictionary of 1611 defined: ".. .Boutonneur: A Buttoner; or an instrument -wherewith buttons are pulled through their o'er-strait holes.. .."2
Fashion influenced garment styles drove the need and desire for the development of an improved tool to fasten buttons....