Luminous Nacre

• Mother of pearl, a pearlescent substance inside a mollusk shell, is also called nacre. It is this nacre that gives mother-of-pearl buttons the distinctive luminance absent in other shell buttons.
  
  

Button-Manufacturing Locales

• Most mother-of-pearl and shell buttons are made in Asia today. Earlier in the century, when pearl buttons were in great demand, a frenzy of shell-button manufacturing also occurred in places like Iowa, California and other regions where mussels or abalone thrived.
  
  

Buttons Made from Other Shells

• Many shell buttons are made from clam, conch or scallop shells and are not limited to the shell's lining but may include layers of the entire shell.
  
  

The Process

• Button blanks were first punched out of the shell; the drilling of the buttonholes came later. Even today, the spent, cut shells from which the buttons were produced are found in places like Muscatine, Iowa, though button production ended there in the 1950s.
  
  

Fun Fact

• Charles Dickens's once wrote about the button manufacturing business and spoke of buttons made from a black shell, which to his eyes "looked quite as pretty" as mother-of-pearl buttons.