Cobalt Blue Moonglow Button Pendant, Czech Glass, Sterling Silver, 1950s Vintage, Bold Color Gift

Many moonglow buttons were pastels: soft lavenders, quiet greys, muted pinks. This one is cobalt. Deep, saturated, the blue of a clear sky at its most insistent, with a ring of gold facets applied during manufacture that catch the light around the button's edge. The moonglow effect does the rest: a dome of clear glass over a rich blue satin underlayer, so the color shifts and deepens depending on the angle. In a category of gentle colors, this button is an outlier.

The bezel is sterling silver with a spaced dot border, and a simple round bail in sterling. The cool silver and the warm gold of the button's original ring bracket the blue from either side.

Hallmarked Blue Piranha and .925. The pendant measures just over 1 inch (2.5 cm) long from top of bail to bottom of pendant, and ¾ inch (1.9 cm) wide. Weight is 5.5 grams. 

Each pendant is available without a chain, so you may use your own if you prefer. If you want to add a chain, I offer different lengths and styles. Every chain comes with a 2-inch extender so you can vary the length. Please choose your chain from the options at checkout.

Your purchase arrives gift boxed, presented in a soft pouch with a story card.

Good for: the friend whose first question is always "what's the story?" The person who picks up a piece of old glass and holds it to the light before she does anything else. A gift that earns its place among the things she keeps close.

Questions? Please message me. I'm happy to help.

About the buttons:

The "humble" button was once not-so-humble. Buttons are actually the earliest form of adornment, sewn onto garments as decoration before they had practical use as fasteners. They were once considered works of art.

Many buttons I come across are dusty and languishing in cardboard boxes or mason jars. I set them into precious metals and allow them to live a new life, with those who cherish the magic of past eras.

Victorian buttons take two forms: molded glass, and what are known as picture buttons, or pictorials. Each pictorial has a specific image, often flowers, birds, or other natural forms. These buttons are comprised of several parts, often three to five layers, which would have been hand-assembled in the 19th century. They're beautiful relics of a time long past.

Black glass buttons were in great demand during the Victorian Era. Queen Victoria famously mourned her husband for forty years, and the rest of England followed. Victorians had great interest in art, history, design, flowers, and symbolism, so almost anything could be translated to these tiny whimsies with which they adorned themselves.

The more colorful buttons are 1950s Czech glass, and are no longer made. These are known as "Moonglow" buttons, due to layering a dome of clear glass over a colored satin glass underlayer. Together the two layers create a sort of "cat's-eye" effect, with subtle shifts as the buttons catch the light. They had a short production window from about the early 1950s to the 1960s, when they were displaced by lighter weight (and less expensive) plastic buttons.