Late last year I mentioned how much I wanted to go to the Busy Beaver Button Company here in Chicago. Well, last month during Obscura Day, a celebration of hidden wonders and unusual places in one’s hometown, I am happy to say I finally paid visit. Founded in 1995, the company expanded from a small apartment to a storefront overseeing 50,000 designs. It was the first to offer 24-karat gold plated buttons and houses the world’s largest button vending machine. Busy Beaver also found the time to open up a Pinback Button Museum, the only kind in the world. The owner Christen Carter has thousands of historically significant and one-of-a-kind buttons (or badges as they’re called in Britain where collecting them is still a thing) as part of her collection, some dating back to the mid-19th century, but only a few hundred are on display. Christen’s brother Joel enthusiastically described nearly every badge pinned to the display cases on the wall, which have been divided into categories like Innovative, Club, Political, Chicago, Advertising, Cause, Music and Social Lubricators. During my personal (and very informative) tour I must say that I have never learned so much about these mechanisms. It helped me appreciate their craftsmanship as well as see the differences in how our culture now communicates. We went from proudly wearing political slogans on our shirts like “We Want Beer” during the Prohibition-era and “We Don’t Want Eleanor Either” during FDR’s presidential campaign to hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. Now we tweet and write godawful comments at the end of news articles. Anyway, the museum is a pretty cool place and you get to make your own button too. I should have made one that said “Everybody Shut The Hell Up!” Maybe next time.
P.S. If you’re interested in knowing which pin-backs make Carter’s Top 10 all-time favorite band list, here you go.
