ELLEN HAUPTLI
2013 FALL STUDIO SALE
Friday, September 27 2-6pm
Saturday, September 28 10am-4pm
Lots of summer clothing will be available at cost or below.
Saturday at 2pm the raffle winner will be picked! It’s not too late to enter, details at the end…
Closures
You may think your average button leads a dull life, but consider the bone button. It started life growing inside a calf, and spent years in that long bovine leg walking freely around Calcutta, revered. Or maybe walking through the savanna in East Africa herded by a Zulu shepherd. Death does not render any part of the animal useless. Its bones are cut and carved and dyed to make buttons that are sewn onto a jacket, worn by one who walks around in a world with streets and stores and steering wheels.
Consider also the shell buttons that started growing inside an oyster, scallop or sea snail in watery environs. Yanked from the ocean floor, its soft insides harvested for meals, the nacre is bored from the shell, carved, polished and dyed to make buttons that adorn a blouse that may confront a platter of oysters on the table at Chez Panisse.
Consider, too, corozo buttons (also called tagua nut or vegetable ivory) that grew on a palm tree in tropical South America. About the size of a small avocado, it swayed in rhythm with the fronds in the warm breeze, was brushed by the wings of a passing bird. At season’s end, it was carved and dyed and the resulting button stitched onto a coat where it might now take in an opera or fly down a snowy hill.
The button with the most ancient and mysterious ancestry is not usually revered like the newcomers mentioned above – the plastic button. Plants, insects and dinosaurs composted in the earth for eons before being pumped to the surface as crude oil. One of the many uses of the resulting petrochemicals became the forming of buttons that imitate the bone, shell and corozo ones, some think not so well. To me, however, they are amazing one-of-a-kind works of art after they leave Judith Content’s hands. She applies several layers and colors of paint to each button creating an intricate and fascinating intensity. What a joy it is to be using them on my clothing! There is only one problem with so many gorgeous buttons – for each jacket I make, my dilemma is which four buttons to choose from the dazzling pile of many.
Here’s Judith in her studio and she says: “I am developing an email list for button lovers called Button Up! Interested people can email me at judithcontent@earthlink.net to be put on it. It will provide periodic mailings with info about shows, studio events, classes etc. “
As to the raffle, here’s the scoop:
I will be riding my bike in the MSSociety’s Waves to Wine September 21st and 22nd to help raise money for their ongoing research programs. For every $25 you donate to the MSSociety to help me toward my goal – before September 26th, I will put your name into my studio raffle! On September 28, with great ceremony and a blindfold, a winner will be chosen. S/he can special order a shirt or jacket from any bolted fabric in my studio. Here’s my personal page at the MSSociety website to copy and paste into the address bar of your browser:
