Buttonhook

This article is about the clothing tool. For the American football run pattern "Button hook", see Curl (route).

A boot button hook or button hook is a metal hook on a handle with a grip, which was used to pull buttons, usually on boots or gloves, more easily through the corresponding buttonholes. Boot buttons were particularly popular in the Victorian era, when fashion dictated that women should wear buttoned boots made of stiff leather. They were usually about the size of a fork, but could be much smaller or larger, depending on whether they were for buttons on collars, gloves, corsets or boots. Between 1880 and the First World War, boot buttons were an item that could be found in practically every household. Today they have become collector's items; there is a Buttonhook Society dedicated to collecting and displaying boot buttons.

Early 20th-century buttonhook advertising a shoe shop in Michigan

A buttonhook in use on a c. 1900 boot

Buttonhooks on display at Bedford Museum & Art Gallery

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  With handles of horn and wood
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  With handles of silver
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  Trench art buttonhooks
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  Pocket knives with buttonhooks

External links

• Silverdale Buttonhooks
• 2013 Exhibition of Buttonhooks, Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, Buxton, Derbyshire, U.K.