Buttonhooks and Shoehorns (Shire Album 122)

The everyday need for a buttonhook began in the early nineteenth century when it was used, as an accessory to masculine fashion, to fasten stiff leather button-boots. By the 1880s, lines of buttons had become fashionable on ladies' gloves, clothing and footwear, and the development of the feminine market encouraged the production of 'fashion buttonhooks' in the wide variety of sizes, shapes and materials that are described in this book, and which can still be found by collectors today. Shoehorns were frequently produced as companions to buttonhooks, but although the latter had fallen into disuse by the 1940s, shoehorns still exist in most shoe shops and some homes to facilitate the slipping on of footwear. A 'schoying horne' was first mentioned in the fifteenth century and the imagination exercised around the well-known basic shape has resulted in the variety so interesting to present day collectors.