Dorset button

Their manufacture was at a peak between 1622 and 1850, after which they were overtaken by machine-made buttons from factories in the developing industries of Birmingham and other growing cities.

Dorset buttons are characteristically made by repeatedly binding yarn over a disc or ring former.

[2] Wheels are made by variations on the same processes of Casting, Slicking, Laying and Rounding:[3] 'High Tops' and 'Dorset Knobs' are patterns that are taller, or nearly as tall, as they are wide.

These were made by using a small piece of triangular fabric and rolled and formed into a doughnut shape with a hole in the centre.

This form was then covered with blanket stitches 'Singletons' are made on a similar ring former to wheels, but this is padded with a disc of woven fabric that is then embroidered.

[6] Originally from Gloucestershire, he had been a soldier in Europe during the Thirty Years War but returned and married a girl from Wardour before settling in Shaftesbury.

It also had the advantage of being a home-based activity, which was more attractive than being outside in all weathers and also reduced expenditure on shoes and the wear and laundering of clothes.

[5] An Act of Parliament was passed in 1699 that, amongst its export restrictions on woolens, prevented the making of buttons “made of cloth, serge, drugget, or other stuffs”.

[13] The Act would remain in force for two hundred years, but in practice appears to have had little lasting effect on trade.

[12] These ring formers replaced the previous horn discs and began the characteristic Dorset styles of the wheel buttons.

[12] After a fire in 1731 destroyed the Bere depot, Elias Case, Abraham's son, employed as a manager a Yorkshire businessman, John Clayton, who reorganised the firm.

[14] Smaller collection offices across the county were established at Milborne Stileham,[3] Sixpenny Handley, Piddletrenthide, Langton and Wool.

Amongst the many industrial machines on display at the Great Exhibition was Mr John Ashton's button-making press, first patented in 1841.

The centralised factories, steam power and access to venture capital could not be competed with by the small-scale enterprises of rural Dorset.

Although the agrarian economy of Dorset remained profitable, the collapse of button-making led to much personal hardship.

[14] In the Edwardian period, renewed interest in traditional crafts led Florence, Dowager Lady Lees to attempt to revive the industry but this was frustrated by the outbreak of the Great War.