Page 15 - December2001

December 2001 269

Report from the
Revision of Divisions Committee

b)' Bntce Betr'k
As many of yoll may recall, last December there \ ,'as a classification pro-
posal printed in the National Button Bulletin. That proposal discussed sorne
major changes to the entire classification systern. A committee was formed
selneral years ago ( 1997), with me as the committee chairman, and its goal was
to bring olrr timelines up to date. There \\'as then an absentee ballot in a later
bulletin, inviting all those who were not attending the 2001 national convention
in Denver, to rrote yes or no on the set forth proposal.
This committee has taken a long and hard look at many possibilities since
the inception of this committee, and spent nurlerolls hours perfecting these
ideas, to make this proposal the best for our society,. After long and careful
str-rdy over the past year, and rvith cliscussing these icleas with many of the
nrembership. inc I uding Peggy O sborne (Cl al ifornia ), Ehzabeth Hughe s
(Pennsylvania) as well as Jocelyn Howells (Oregon), came to a decision at the
national convention this year to redefine the proposed dateline. We found that
the date of 1980 \\'as more workable that the original 1990 date. And by the
response from the membership present at the Wednesday er,'ening classification
meeting, \ ne all felt that 1980 was better for our society. I would like to thank,
Peggy, Elizabeth, and Jocelyn for their insightful ideas and r,vith their backup
reasoning to this committee.
With the start of 1980, designer Patrick Kelly brought into the fashion
w,orld a ne\\' concept in fashion and design. Along with that, buttons started to
change. A new group of vegetable ivory (lazer cut), gilded metals, new fab-
rics, diachroic glass, horn, and ne\^r Clzech glass, including new moonglows as
well as other new buttons and designs, came onto the market. In the late 1980's
and into the 1990's and to the present time, there has also been a resurgence of
studio artists, ne\ ,r glass (including lacy, tingue type, and others), Russian lac-
quer, bone, and many other materials that have been produced strictly for the
button collecting world. These changes were inevitable, with rising prices and
scarcity of not only the Dir,'ision I buttons (pre- 19 I 8) but the earlier Division
III buttons as well, (like Aritas Motiwala buttons,, and so on). Even though
inevitable, they also changed dramatically our button collecting hobby as well.
With all this in mind the classification revision comlnittee, decided to rec-
ommend and propose that we move our tirneline for modern buttons up to pres-
ent times, and therefore re-proposed the date of 1980 to the present. Today the
1950s and 1960s collectibles, as well as prior are considered internationally as
a vintage period and not a modern period.
This committee would like to also thank Ed Hurley (New,York), who at the
classification meeting on Wednesday el,ening at National, after much discus-
sion of this matter. stood up and spoke. Ed said a light had just gone off in his