Purple text on blue background.

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Collage images of Republican presidential campaign buttons from throughout the 19th and 20th Century. Examples include: Nixon, Taft, Goldwater, Ford, Willkie, Reagan, Hoover etc...

Buttons are a honored tradition in the political campaigns. They are handy to pass out, inexpensive to make, and people will wear them. Buttons get your message out, identify your support staff, and encourage the public. As early as 1860, Abraham Lincoln and his various opponents used buttons to advocate their campaigns. This button displayed an array of historical Republican Presidential campaign buttons, including the ones that were used in as recent as the 1988 Reagan/Bush Campaign.

Collage image of Democratic presidential campaign buttons from throughout the 19th and 20th Century. Buttons include Kennedy, Dukakis, Mondale, Johnson, and others.

Political buttons have been around since the George Washington campaign. Early "buttons" were simply a brass lapel pin with an engraving.  As soon as the first photographs were printed, campaign buttons often included a picture along with a campaign slogan or the names of the candidates.  Celluloid buttons (round metal disks covered with thin paper and enclosed in a celluloid film) became popular in the early twentieth century, and were the most popular buttons of the "golden age  of campaign buttons" between 1896 and 1916. Campaign buttons remain a popular method to show support for political candidates and causes. 

Black text on yellow background. 

Indigo Dragon Studios is a graphic and web design company run by Nick and Angela Mizgala. They retired the web design portion of the company in 2008 but make exceptions for people in the comic industry.  Since 2008, they have focused upon their webcomic called Think Weasel.

Black text on white background with union bug stamped on back.

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Portrait of a man looking slightly away to the right of the picture. He wears a bow tie, a black blazer with a button on his left breast,  and white shirt.

Photographic pinback buttons made with celluloid material were extremely popular from the late 1800s to the 1930s.  It was during the 1860s that photography became more available on the commercial market. Humphrey E. Copley of Connecticut sought a patent in 1861 to incorporate photographs onto buttons by utilizing a metal rim to hold the photograph in place. This technology coincided with the Civil War and mourners embraced the option of being able to wear visual representations of their loved ones. John Wesley Hyatt was an American inventor who received a patent for a product named celluloid in 1870. After refinement of the initial product, Hyatt’s celluloid became the first commercially profitable synthetic material. United States patent records reflect the usage of celluloid in making buttons with photographs in the late 1880s. In 1893 Benjamin S. Whitehead acquired a patent for using celluloid over the photo to protect the image. The increased availability of photography coupled with the ability of manufacturers to produce buttons inexpensively allowed the public to create a fashion fad out of the desire to have portable keepsakes.  

Black background with white text with two goats butting heads. 

A play on words where the text reads "just a button," and the goats are  just a 'buttin' their heads together. 

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Blue text on white background

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Yellow text centered on a red background.

Underground Uplift Unlimited (UUU) was an ephemera shop in the East Village run by Randy Wicker. They created and sold some of the most worn protest buttons of the 60s. 

Black and yellow background with black and yellow text over opposite colored background.

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