One of the most fascinating rural industries was the handmaking of buttons which appeared in Shaftesbury towards the end of the 16th century and almost overnight expanded throughout the whole of East Dorset employing nearly every woman and child in that area on some fascet of the vraft but which vanished with equal alacrity in the mid 19th century due to the Industrial Revolution.
This book gives instructions on how to make the various varieties of Dorset Buttons: the Singleton, the Old Dorset, the Birds Eye, the Blandford Cartwheel, the Crosswheel, the Basket and the High Top
