A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Friday 30 August 2019

Wooden Clothing Buttons.

Wooden Clothing Buttons.

American Artifacts of Personal Adornment, 1680-1820:


Blank/Mold: A “Blank/Mold” is a bone or wood button with either zero holes or one hole. The single hole was a product of manufacturing, when these buttons were cut with a lathe or a carpenter’s brace and bit (Hinks 1988:67). They could be used as the backs to stamped metal buttons, the supporting disc for cloth buttons, or more holes could be drilled in them to make simple, one-piece bone or wooden buttons (ibid).
https://www.daacs.org/wp-content/uploads/buttons.pdf
"Wood buttons were also made in colonial crafts shops and homes. During the 18th century, most wooden buttons were plain and utilitarian. In 1770, Benjamin Randolph advertised his apple, holy, and laurel buttons (Luscomb, ix). Decorated wooden buttons, which were carved, painted, and inlaid, were popular in the 19th century".
https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1042&context=utk_chanhonoproj


Wooden Button Moulds.
Wood backed 
 brass button with catgut shank.

To date I have not come across any images of original 18th century wooden buttons with more than one hole, other than the sample above which is a wood backing for a brass button.
Keith.

Thursday 15 August 2019

17C American Women: Women in the 17C Chesapeake (1680s)

17C American Women: Women in the 17C Chesapeake (1680s): In the 17th century, most women came to the Chesapeake as indentured servants. To pay for their passage, women usually worked seven years as...

Wednesday 7 August 2019

17C American Women: 1676 Ann Cotton's Account of Bacon's Rebellion in ...

17C American Women: 1676 Ann Cotton's Account of Bacon's Rebellion in ...: In 1676, about 1,000 Virginians broke out of control led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon. They fiercely resented Virginia's ...

Young Dark Emu By Bruce Pascoe.

Young Dark Emu, By Bruce Pascoe.
I have just finished reading the book Young Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, & to say that I am saddened by what I read would be an understatement. This book tells the true story of the Australian Aboriginal people, their lifestyles before the European invasion. We have been taught that the indigenous peoples of Australia were nomadic & had no permanent settlements, they lived in makeshift humpies & were continuously foraging for food. This is all a lie, these Aboriginal people had permanent towns, and their dwellings were very similar to the Woodland Indian wigwams in the New World. Some villages were within a fenced area, & they had extensive farmlands.
Far from having continuously to forage, these native people farmed & harvested the land & stored their produce for use in hard times. When Australia was invaded, settled by white people, these Aboriginals were driven from their farms, their villages were burnt to the ground. Explorers robbed their food catches with no thought to what hardships this would case these people.
Fish traps & fish farming constructions dating back at least 40,000 years were found, does this sound like a people that had not already settled the land? The whites brought in cattle & sheep that destroyed the farm lands already there, they ate all the crops & trod down the malleable soil until it was hard. Some settlers found & used some of this farm land commenting on how good the soil was. They moved in on this good farm land taking it for themselves.  No wonder then that we read about nomadic tribes, they now had no choice. Their villages & farms destroyed, their stored food supplies robbed. They had no choice but to keep on the move to avoid these invaders, & even so many hundreds of them were systematically murdered, this was genocide. Those that were not killed were enslaved.
I urge you to read Young Dark Emu, it is an eye opener to say the least. To think of what we have lost, what the Aboriginals have lost due to the ignorance & pure maliciousness of the white settlers is soul destroying. As living historians living in Australia, this history is something we should know & share.
Keith.