By popular demand—a photo of the two blue sparkly buttons from the last post–a closeup:
On to new business– one day we headed out early toward Montmartre. We took the metro and when we got off our stop nearby, we discovered we had to climb 115 steps up to the street. Ho-ho-ha-ha—the joke was on us. But we made it.
Couldn’t have been a more beautiful day! After doing some tourist-y stuff, we had lunch and headed toward Saint Pierre—the well-known street of fabrics, fabrics, fabrics. The street is literally lined with bolts of fabric–like a dream. The most famous store is Reine–
Reine Tissus–I like the mannikins that are dotted throughout the store–showing off the various fabrics—they seem right at home amongst the bolts of material:
And lo and behold, Montmartre has a button store——Dam Boutons, with a little lizard as kind of a mascot:
And there are buttons, all right. They are housed in glass tubes, priced on the rim, and you can browse to your heart’s content. If you find a button you want to buy, just pull the tube out a bit from the pack, and the clerk will select it for you.
These are the buttons (boutons!) I bought there: click to enlarge-
my favorite? I think it’s the corny pearl and silver bead one in the middle—I love the 1950’s look—-and again, I select an older rhinestone button—a wave of three stripes:
There was also a good old-fashioned variety store—a true mercerie–(which means haberdasher–which means notions store)–on Saint Pierre and they had buttons
And I found a bin that had “last of the line” buttons. These are the buttons I bought there:
I’ll bet you’re tired of buttons. No, that’s silly. But I’ll give you a break and we’ll talk about something else next time. How about books? We’ll see.
How did I miss these before? I love best the red buttons — superbe! — and the starry night button. But they’re all great.
what starry night button? thank you, booksilver, for being on my planet and liking buttons.