Lotus Glass Buttons

About Our Lotus Glass Buttons

Hold one up to a window and you can see straight through it. The glass is a mossy green that thins to almost clear at the rim, and a four-petal lotus is pressed into the face with a fine frosted texture spreading out from the middle. That gold-tone bead at the centre is the head of a small rivet running through the glass. On the back it becomes the loop you sew through.

15mm across, a shade under 5/8 inch. Noticeable on a shirt front without taking it over.

How they behave on fabric

Glass is not paint. It takes on whatever sits behind it, so the same button reads pale and watery on a white blouse and much deeper, almost opaque, on charcoal or navy. Sew one onto olive linen and the green nearly vanishes into the cloth. Put it on cream and it steps forward. Worth a thought before you pick the garment.

The frosted petals are what catch under lamplight. The clear outer glass just carries the light through.

Linen shirts, lightweight knits, cheongsam-style tops, bag flaps. A single one makes a decent closure detail on a plain tote.

Why a lotus

The lotus turns up everywhere in Chinese decorative work, usually reduced to four or five petals radiating from a centre point, which is exactly what is moulded here. Up close it reads as a flower. From across a room it reads as a soft starburst. That double reading is why it sits as easily on a plain modern shirt as on anything with a traditional cut.

The back, and sewing them on

No holes on the face. The rivet through the middle ends in a small gold-tone ring on the back, so thread never crosses the glass and the lotus stays clean. It also lifts the button a millimetre or two off the fabric, which is what you want on anything knitted, since a flat button sinks into the yarn and stops closing properly.

Four passes through the ring, knot underneath, done. Ordinary all-purpose thread is enough; nothing heavy-duty needed. There is a needle and thread in every pack, enough for the full set.

Before you order, measure the buttonhole rather than the old button. The face domes slightly, so it needs a little more clearance than a flat button of the same width. If your holes are already tight, expect to open them a couple of millimetres.

Six or fifteen

Six does one shirt front, or a repair. Fifteen covers a shirt plus cuffs, or two garments, or leaves you spares. Take the spares seriously. Glass chips if it meets a tiled floor, and matching a green six months later rarely works out.

What the glass will and won’t do

Moulded glass, not stone and not resin. Three things follow from that:

• The green shifts between buttons. Some lean yellow, some lean grey. You will see the range inside a single pack.
• Faint bubbles and swirl lines sit inside a few of them. That is glass, not damage.
• The frosted petal texture is cut deeper on some, so the pattern shows up stronger on a few than on others.

If you need fifteen buttons that match each other exactly, buy resin instead, it will do that job better. If you want a placket where every button is quietly its own thing, that variation is the entire point.

One more thing said plainly: glass chips. These are decorative buttons for garments and craft work, not hardware for a jacket that gets thrown in the back of a truck.

Care

Water is fine. Being tumbled around a drum is not. Hand wash, or run a cool gentle cycle with the garment inside a mesh bag. Bleach and gritty cleaners will dull the gold-tone ring long before they ever touch the glass. A dry cloth is all the polishing needed.

No ironing directly over them, no tumble dryer.