Researching buttons - heraldic, military and general

[Oxgirl]

The humble button has been round for a long time now and, let’s be honest, are a common find. Well the plain ones are now. You might be lucky enough to find an early one and want to date it. Or you might have one with a design you’d like to know more about. Here’s a list of resources to help you with knowing your buttons better

General
The starting point for working out the age of a button can be made easier by having a scroll through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) guide to buttons and button and loop fasteners.

Here’s a brilliant paper on buttons and IDing them. It helps you to identify by material, construction and loop back. Note this one only covers buttons post 1700.

If you want to see some examples then this site has lots of button photos, incl. livery ones.

Identifying and dating button back marks
General British button back marks
Birmingham makers
London makers

Livery buttons and heraldry background
Livery buttons
Free pdf of family crests
Fairbairns Crests of leading families pdf book
The heraldry society
Great library of heraldic devices

Military buttons
Military buttons https://www.kellybadges.co.uk/40-uniform-
More military buttons (this site specialises in early British buttons) https://asahelena.wixsite.com/militarybuttons - note you may not get a response if you email them

[Dave The Slave]

Some interesting links, Cath.
Not sure if the https://asahelena.wixsite.com/militarybuttons is still current. Although a great resource to look at have sent a couple of emails, with photos to register a Napoleonic button, that exists no where else, without reply.
Did contact Firmins, hoping they had an archive of how many they produced, although they did reply, they did not have the information.
The search goes on.
Regards,
Dave.

[Oxgirl]

Some interesting links, Cath.
Not sure if the https://asahelena.wixsite.com/militarybuttons is still current. Although a great resource to look at have sent a couple of emails, with photos to register a Napoleonic button, that exists no where else, without reply.
Did contact Firmins, hoping they had an archive of how many they produced, although they did reply, they did not have the information.
The search goes on.
Regards,
Dave.

Sorry to hear that you didn't get a response. Great visual resource non the less so I'll leave it here but add a notethat the site may not still be manned. Thanks Dave