Neighbors: Miniature Artwork

Helen Pelta takes out hundreds of buttons in plastic bags and on button trays and starts laying them out on a table in the Gulf Gate Library. Her bag is reminiscent of Mary Poppins’ — a bottomless pit of buttons and button paraphernalia. As she begins to organize them on the table, a young woman stops and stares at the table’s contents.

“Wow. These are really cool,” she says.

Pelta and her husband, Hal, look up from their button organizing and smile. They engage her in a conversation about the Tamiami Trail Button Club, and they give her some information about their first meeting of the season, which was held Wednesday.

The Peltas have been involved in the Tamiami Trail Button Club for six years, and Pelta now serves as its president, while Hal Pelta is in charge of the club’s public relations. Prior to being in the Tamiami Trail Button Club, Pelta was a member of the Central Jersey Buttoneers while living in Pennsylvania. The Tamiami Trail Button Club is one of six button clubs in Florida; it celebrated its 50th anniversary this year.

Pelta started collecting buttons 20 years ago when a friend asked her to be on the lookout at yard sales for buttons that she could use to make jewelry.

“I went to yard sales, and I came home with plain shirt buttons, and she gently said she wanted things that looked like little works of art,” Pelta said. “The next buttons I found were tiny metal buttons that captivated me. They had stamped designs on them, and after that, I tried to buy every button in the world.”

Pelta began selling some of her buttons at an antique market in New Jersey in order to be able to buy more buttons. Hal Pelta would go with her to spend time with his wife.

“She (has been) the light of my life for more than 50 years, and I don’t drive anymore, so rather than stay home and be housebound, I would hop in the car and go off to button things,” Hal Pelta says.

Although he is not a collector like his wife, he has learned a lot, along with Pelta, about the history, types and categories of buttons.

“I like the ones that have to do with transportation, like the trolley and railroad buttons,” he says.
Pelta doesn’t have a favorite type of button.

“I get hooked on a material and then some other thing will come to light and I will try to get a lot of that,” she says. “Right now I am into the hand-painted porcelain studs.”

The Peltas have an entire room in their house devoted to buttons. The couple has drawers, boxes and walls filled with buttons amassed over the last two decades.

“I have two tubs of buttons that are my favorite buttons that I could grab quickly if I needed to take them in case of a disaster,” Pelta says.

Over the years, Hal Pelta has learned what makes button collectors tick.

“You collect what you like,” he says. “Nobody collects because of the monetary value of the buttons. They collect because they like and want it. It’s not about the money.”

Although some button club members, including Pelta, estimate to have spent thousands of dollars buying buttons, they say the sentimental value far outweighs the cost.

“There are competitions where people submit trays or cards of buttons based on a theme or material,” Pelta says. “The grand prize in a category is usually about $5.”

Each Tamiami Trail Button Club meeting begins with time for the members to share, sell, trade and look at one another’s button collections, followed by a program led by one of the members. The programs can be about anything relating to buttons, such as the history of a certain type of button or the origin and reason behind a button term.

“These are really miniature works of art,” says Hal Pelta.

Click here to view buttons from Helen Pelta's collection.