All buttoned up

This is my children's great grandmother's button box. The box itself is a fantastic old tin with a faded picture of a curly haired cherub of a child on the lid. Around the side of the tin, in smart black and red lettering, it says Carr's FISHER BOY Assorted Biscuits. The entire tin is bent and buckled and faded and even slightly rusted in parts, but the lid still seals and it contains a collection of the most fantastic buttons. There are buttons of every shape and size from plastic to wooden to leather and tin. There are even some minute buttons which appear to be made of shell.

Heaven only knows how many years she had been saving these buttons for. She was a true blue make-do-and-mender. She saved absolutely everything for a rainy day. Her name was Euphemia Rosemary and she married her childhood sweetheart, Robin, during the war. Tragically, Robin was killed in his submarine when she was pregnant with their only child. She named her daughter Robin, for the father she would never know, and who inherited this button box along with many other amazing bits of history from her mother.

Robin, my mother-in-law, has now kindly passed the button box on to me.