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Keeping Skor: Creativity, Curiosity, and the Things We Keep. A podcast about why people collect the things they love. Each episode begins with a collection - but the conversation quickly expands into something deeper: memory, imagination, and the choices we make about what matters. Through thoughtful conversations with collectors of all kinds, Keeping Skor explores the stories, passions, and meaning behind the objects people choose to keep.
Stephen Skorski: Hello?
Lisa Mandle: Can you hear me?
Stephen Skorski: I can, I can hear you perfectly. How are you?
Lisa Mandle: Oh, good. For a second there, I forgot to unmute.
Stephen Skorski: No, you're great, you sound perfect. How are you?
Lisa Mandle: I'm well, thank you! How are you? It's so nice to meet you!
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, you too. I'm great. I just got through with a full day of teaching, and…
Stephen Skorski: Doing all that fun stuff,
Stephen Skorski: You know, it actually was, it was really great. We talked about home and atmosphere and…
Stephen Skorski: Then we were in the wood shop for a while, so…
Stephen Skorski: that was fun, and… and now, I'm super excited, because I want to hear about buttons. I'm so… I'm so excited! I've been looking forward to this conversation all day.
Lisa Mandle: I love that! I love that you're a collector, and…
Lisa Mandle: you know, that it's just… there's so many intersections, it sounds like, in so many ways in our lives, from what I've… I just know from learning about you through Katie, and her just delight in having…
Lisa Mandle: such a great, you know, talking companion for so long, it's just like, oh my god, just beautiful, beautiful, you know, and…
Lisa Mandle: So, yeah, it's just so cool, because it's like, I don't know you, but I kind of know about you.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, same.
Lisa Mandle: Same with you, right?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's, of course, double, double the pleasure.
Stephen Skorski: Get to actually talk, put a voice to a name in stories, and then also get to hear about,
Stephen Skorski: These great little objects.
Lisa Mandle: I know, right?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Exactly, I love that. I love all of this.
Lisa Mandle: So excited about it.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, good! Well, okay, so here's the thing. This is… we're… this is a conversation, so I don't have a whole lot of prepared, questions, I know almost nothing about buttons other than, you know, I have the ones on my…
Stephen Skorski: shirts, and, and, you know, that sort of thing. Sure.
Stephen Skorski: And I kind of purposely didn't do a whole lot of looking into them, just because I wanted to go in really fresh.
Lisa Mandle: Interesting, I love that.
Stephen Skorski: Well, you know, because I know that it's something that's meaningful for you.
Stephen Skorski: And that's really… that's really actually what I'd like… like to hear about, right? But before we even jump into buttons, because I don't know you, maybe you could… just give me a picture of, like, what's your… what's your week like? What's your normal…
Stephen Skorski: week-like? What do you do besides buttons?
Lisa Mandle: Well, you know, I have… a movement class I teach every week, and.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm…
Lisa Mandle: And I love that, and I used to do it a lot more. So it was toward the end of my, kind of, creative, really active work life, I think.
Lisa Mandle: I was really doing a lot of dance, but, my background has really more been…
Lisa Mandle: in the visual arts, theater arts, and things like that. And so…
Lisa Mandle: I've kind of done a million things. I'm one of those people that has an annoying, like, large spread of interests and capacity. So I started out drawing, I did a lot of drawing, and…
Lisa Mandle: Really love theater and acting and all that. So, you know, I just kind of have this weird…
Lisa Mandle: mash-up of things, and it all kind of…
Lisa Mandle: came into… I think my body hurt from drawing and painting, standing or sitting, looking, one side, right arm, right hand, you know, always just the right side, and then I was sewing.
Lisa Mandle: And so it was the right side of the body, holding the wheel of the machine, everything right side, right foot on the pedal, everything on my body was so fucked up.
Lisa Mandle: And I had to dance, like, I had to move, I had to do some kind of movement.
Lisa Mandle: I just knew my body couldn't manage being a maker without
Lisa Mandle: balancing it, and eventually, you know, it just turned into more movement. So that's kind of what I…
Lisa Mandle: I've been doing mostly.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm. So did you discover the need for movement really early on, or is this something that…
Lisa Mandle: Took, you know.
Stephen Skorski: 10, 20 years to kind of discover that there was sort of this tension on one side of your body, like, you know, how did that come about? That's really interesting.
Lisa Mandle: I mean, I think, like, I… I started out as a kid, I had really crap ankles, and so I would… my parents had me ice skate.
Lisa Mandle: To develop strength in my ankles, and so somewhere that turned into, like, dance.
Lisa Mandle: on ice. It was right around when Peggy Fleming was a, you know, new… this new idea of dance on ice. It was so sporty before that, and…
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: Just captivated by that…
Lisa Mandle: combination, and I… and I was a kid, you know, so it was, like, early, early March. My dad was a musician, and so I was…
Lisa Mandle: I played music, and it was just very organized and cerebral for him, and I was more intuitive. I couldn't really read music.
Lisa Mandle: very well, but I could hear and…
Lisa Mandle: you know, so I just was living in a different realm, I think, for so much of my youth, and…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know, I've found myself, I guess…
Lisa Mandle: needing to… I had dance as a child. My parents had me in modern dance classes when I was, like, 5 and 7 years old, and so…
Stephen Skorski: You know, just really cool images.
Lisa Mandle: And Dad was a teacher, he taught, he taught music, he taught… he was a pianist, and he taught music in the Cleveland Public Schools. And so, my sister and I would go around, when we were super little, we'd go with my dad.
Lisa Mandle: And he would do, you know, maybe shows, like, really silly things like Mary Poppins, Walt Disney's Mary Poppins, kind of…
Lisa Mandle: call out songs, and we would make little puppets. My sister and I do little puppet shows with my dad in the schools for the really little kids. I mean, crazy.
Lisa Mandle: really fun stuff, you know, when I was little. And so a lot of exposure to dance and music, and…
Lisa Mandle: And so I… I knew, I knew, like, I… I just knew about the body really early.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: You know, and I felt… I was comfortable in my body. I was really comfortable in my body my whole life.
Lisa Mandle: So, I love dance, I loved sex, you know, like, all this stuff. And so, you know, super…
Lisa Mandle: just… I was a physical young person, I think, and so…
Lisa Mandle: I had that, I had that in my bones, what it felt like to feel good.
Stephen Skorski: Huh, alright.
Lisa Mandle: And so, as I got…
Lisa Mandle: obsessed… like, to me, drawing and painting became almost like obsessive markings… marking paper syndrome. Like, like, once my eye wanted to capture what I was seeing with my hand on paper.
Lisa Mandle: I was just hours and hours and hours of focus, and it was so deadly, in a certain way, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: And I was really good at it, so I got a lot of praise for it, so I was really, like, wanting that external…
Lisa Mandle: Praise, you know, for being able to accomplish this thing, but then…
Lisa Mandle: and it felt good to be able to draw what I could see. I was really good in figure drawing and stuff like that. And then I was modeling, like, I figured out…
Lisa Mandle: where I wanted to go to art school, because I was a model all around DC for the art classes, you know, so I would… I could tell who was a good teacher. So I don't know, I was just comfortable in my body, I was comfortable with movement, but…
Lisa Mandle: But I was, you know…
Lisa Mandle: really imbalanced for many, many years of my life, I think, and it took a long time
Lisa Mandle: To kind of get… get back, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's really interesting, as you're, as you're speaking and telling me these things.
Stephen Skorski: And knowing our mutual friend, Katie, I suspect that you and Katie can also talk for weeks on end. Because, you know, you just said about 15 things that I want to be like, tell me more about that!
Lisa Mandle: Oh, tell me about.
Stephen Skorski: You know, like…
Lisa Mandle: Oh my god, right?
Stephen Skorski: So…
Lisa Mandle: I know, I know, it's… we're all such, you know, rich tapestries of narrative, everybody's life, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Everybody's.
Lisa Mandle: No.
Stephen Skorski: You said it, everybody. That's the thing.
Lisa Mandle: Everybody! So many threads, and so many, you know, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, it's amazing, it really is. So, you said something about…
Stephen Skorski: being… and now the exact words you used escaped me, but you were talking about being, like, 5, 6, 7, and something about being, like, existing in another world,
Stephen Skorski: What exactly did you mean by that?
Lisa Mandle: Like, I think that my… I think that it was a really creative household, you know, that I grew up in, in a certain way, but then at the same time, there were some…
Lisa Mandle: Kind of really,
Lisa Mandle: A bit… a bit abrasive and difficult things that were going on with my sister, and behavioral stuff, and relational things that were going on with…
Lisa Mandle: Us as siblings, but also just things that had to do with
Lisa Mandle: my parents' conflict around how to handle my sister's mental illness. I think we didn't have words for it at the time.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And I don't know what you would call what she was as I was growing up, so… but it was so painful and difficult for them.
Lisa Mandle: So I, I think…
Lisa Mandle: I think I felt like I knew all along that it was a little unsafe all the time, and then at the same time, there was this…
Lisa Mandle: Beautiful fantasy life that was going on.
Lisa Mandle: that… it wasn't a fantasy, but I knew that it was…
Lisa Mandle: I knew that there was something really special about how creative our house was, and that it was okay to paint, it was okay to question, and it was okay to make noise, and it was okay to…
Lisa Mandle: argue, you know, like, there were things that were sort of taboo in other people, and, like, even as a kid, I knew… just stuff you know. You can just say.
Lisa Mandle: Kids are smart, you know, you're smart when you're little. Way smarter than we get credit for.
Lisa Mandle: Could not agree more.
Stephen Skorski: kids are… yeah, I mean… Right? I think it's actually amazing how…
Stephen Skorski: Well, I mean, I look back on my own childhood, and I was not dumb. You know, you just… you just, you pick up on things. You sort of intuitively know what's… what's right, what's wrong,
Stephen Skorski: I think, given a lot of responsibility at a young age, at least for me, was, like, such a gift.
Lisa Mandle: You know, I mean, I say that in, like, the absolute best way, like, you know, and I would hope that kids today would have that experience, I'm not sure that they do.
Stephen Skorski: Because there is such a bubble around them. And maybe, maybe that's good for, for certain reasons, but…
Stephen Skorski: I think what you're talking about, you know, kind of being very in tune with yourself, and what you like, and what you don't like, sort of like, okay, this is safe, this is unsafe, but here's a kind of a key to another world that I can explore. You know, to discover that at, like, 5 or 6, I mean, that's amazing.
Stephen Skorski: Some will never discover that, but to get that so early and to be comfortable with it, that's amazing.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: I think there's, like, a certain kind of hyper-perceptive capacity, I think.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, like, I have a really great relationship with my sister now, but growing up, I felt terrorized a lot.
Lisa Mandle: And so I had this sort of protective…
Lisa Mandle: capacity, I think, I developed to be hyper-observant and aware.
Lisa Mandle: so, I don't know, I'm…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know what else to say about that.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, that's, no, I mean, you know, the thing is, it's like, we're gonna get into buttons, right? But…
Lisa Mandle: If we just get…
Stephen Skorski: Into buttons. I don't really know… You know, I mean.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Let's face it, these conversations are never really about the thing, you know? It's like getting to know somebody through the thing, so just.
Lisa Mandle: True.
Stephen Skorski: a little bit about your background, and I didn't know… well, I didn't know any of that, but I… I guess the…
Stephen Skorski: The level of… engagement with creative endeavors throughout your whole life. You know, that sort of helps me understand
Stephen Skorski: Probably everything that you're gonna say for the rest of this conversation.
Lisa Mandle: So when we are talking specifically about something like buttons, you know, it kind of, you know, gives a nice foundation to all of that. It's really cool, I love it.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, well, that's…
Lisa Mandle: Thinking about, like, you know, through lines,
Lisa Mandle: you know, I had a very typical, you know, mom's sewing
Lisa Mandle: The, you know, cookie tin with the classic metal cookie tin.
Lisa Mandle: You know, random brand with sewing shit in it, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Like.
Lisa Mandle: every kid's… Mother, or grandmother, or aunt, or somebody has that, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: And so, you know, that was, like, as early as I can remember, just loving that, like, the whole, you know…
Stephen Skorski: Well, that's what I was… I was gonna just sort of, just sort of ask you to expand upon that. Is that… is that the earliest?
Stephen Skorski: memory that you have, and just tell me a little more about that. Like, what did it mean, and, you know, what were you seeing, and, you know, paint the whole…
Lisa Mandle: Because…
Stephen Skorski: name.
Lisa Mandle: It's interesting because we have Katie in common, and Katie and I both
Lisa Mandle: learned about and understood the whole, experience of ASMR at the same time.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And had this revelation that we both experience it intensely.
Lisa Mandle: From different things.
Lisa Mandle: And, so I have…
Lisa Mandle: The, the, like, tapping, you know, tapping or cla- like, the sound, the sound.
Lisa Mandle: Of tinker… tinkering around…
Lisa Mandle: A tin with the little metal things and all the little plastic buttons and whatever all the little things are that are in one of those
Lisa Mandle: sewing tins. From the earliest age, now I can understand. I was totally self-soothing.
Lisa Mandle: Managing my anxiety.
Lisa Mandle: From a really early age, through the joy of the sound of certain things, of tinkering with certain things.
Lisa Mandle: And that was… that was huge. So that was, like, I think the very beginning of it. And years… the years later, after my marriage, which was so crazy and caustic, ultimately.
Lisa Mandle: And ended, I… I was long divorced, and
Lisa Mandle: this moment of understanding what ASMR was with Katie, I'm like, oh my god, I was fucking doping.
Lisa Mandle: all the time during my marriage. I would just be… my ex and I would have this joke where I would be playing with my buttons and my… I'd get these plastic tackle boxes and film with all my buttons.
Lisa Mandle: And then organize them, you know, by whatever organizing. We can go into that, but… Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: you know, it's like, I would be up to, you know, clinkety-clinkity, clinketyening in the boxes, and he would call from his room downstairs. He's like, are you playing with your buttons?
Lisa Mandle: And I'd say, yes.
Lisa Mandle: And, yeah, I'd yell back to him, yes, and then he would call back, what does that mean? And then you would both laugh.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's so funny.
Lisa Mandle: And so, I had this revelation, you know, when we understood the ASMR thing, I'm like, oh.
Stephen Skorski: I did not think…
Stephen Skorski: One of the first things that you would tell me about buttons,
Stephen Skorski: is the sound of the buttons. You know, that was not at all where I thought this was gonna go.
Lisa Mandle: that.
Stephen Skorski: And no, it's amazing. Well, and tell me… so you're… I love sound, and I love… and space, and how these things… so I have a certain relationship with sound, but I don't have what you are…
Stephen Skorski: describing, right? So I'm picturing you as a young child, and you have, again, this tin, and it's filled with buttons and safety pins and, you know, kind of other things that are just sort of thrown into this thing. My grandmother had a very similar, you know, sort of, it was like a coffee tin or something like that.
Lisa Mandle: Perfect.
Stephen Skorski: Exactly.
Stephen Skorski: And so, because I don't have a relationship with sound the way you do.
Stephen Skorski: you know, I'm picturing you, again, running your fingers through this thing, maybe, you know, picking them up and dropping them, but what I really want to know is, what are you feeling when you're doing that, right? You said it was self-soothing, and… but help me understand, does it become, like, a meditative state, or is it…
Stephen Skorski: you know, are you consciously trying to make certain sounds, or replicate certain sounds, or do you just get… No, I don't do anything? No, I don't…
Lisa Mandle: I don't even think I was aware of it at the time. I think the first thing…
Lisa Mandle: Like, this is all me laying back onto what I now understand about.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, sure.
Lisa Mandle: So I think the first thing I was doing is I was sorting, I was indexing, I was categorizing, I was organizing, and so whatever would be in the tin would be out of the tin in some other place on the table, on the floor, wherever I was, on a sofa, whatever, bed, just, you know, sorting what was in it.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: So, you know, grouping things, making little groupings and things like that. I think that I started doing that really early.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so…
Lisa Mandle: It's like, I think I collected a lot of toys, and I was pretty messy. Like, I think there's a classic story when… when I was little, I might have been really little, like.
Lisa Mandle: 4 or 5.
Lisa Mandle: And I had… My dad was trying to get me to clean up my toy closet.
Lisa Mandle: And he said, alright, if you can find, and he described a part of a game or a toy.
Lisa Mandle: Jimmy was like, if you can find that, then you can leave the closet the way it is. You know, because I was like, this is how I do it. This is my… you know, like, I would argue.
Lisa Mandle: With my father, that, like…
Lisa Mandle: you know, why do you spank me? We could just have a conversation about this. That was who I was.
Lisa Mandle: And so, I just ended up, you know, going right to
Lisa Mandle: you know, opening a box, pulling a thing out, finding a thing in the middle of it, and then pulling the thing out that he was describing. Like, within minutes, you know?
Lisa Mandle: He was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna stop pomding you about your…
Stephen Skorski: Everyone that you, you won.
Lisa Mandle: I won that round.
Stephen Skorski: God. Well, that, that, that's… .
Lisa Mandle: So I don't know how I got so organized, because I was such a messy kid, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Well, that's what I was gonna just ask. If I, you know, if I was to walk into your home right now.
Stephen Skorski: Where do I find the buttons? I mean, are they… are they hidden away? Are they out in the open? Are they in tins? Are they… you know, where are we keeping these things?
Lisa Mandle: They are, pretty much… when you walk in, they're, like, they're hidden. You don't see them right away, but if you go around a corner, they're right there.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm, okay.
Lisa Mandle: And they're all, like, organized in these tackles, these plastic…
Lisa Mandle: Tackle boxes without the lids on them.
Lisa Mandle: Oh, sure. Because some of them shouldn't be in… with, you know, without air, so they have to… it's kind of not the best thing to store them in plastic if it's sealed. Some of them… some materials will…
Lisa Mandle: deteriorate, some will spontaneously combust, so…
Lisa Mandle: a good idea. So, yeah, they're just…
Lisa Mandle: But they're all in one place, you know, they're just all… I have a lot of them, but they're all in one place.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: And they're all in, like, cubbies. They're, like, in a cubby, in a set of cubbies, you know, like a big rolling…
Lisa Mandle: Almost like a short wall, like a half wall of cubbies that are…
Lisa Mandle: You know, maybe… maybe 6 inches tall.
Lisa Mandle: And… 15 inches wide, and there's a lot of them, and I have about 50 boxes of buttons.
Lisa Mandle: Like, tackle boxes.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so, when you say tackle box, you're kind of talking about it's, like, one layer.
Stephen Skorski: clear.
Lisa Mandle: Where it has all the little subdivided cubby sections that are, you know, you can… yeah. Okay. And I popped all the lids off so they can breathe.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, okay, okay. Well, that's really helpful. And so none of these then are displayed
Stephen Skorski: out in the open. Like, if you want to look at them, you need to pull one of these trays out.
Lisa Mandle: I did, this year, start doing something that people call carding, where I've started to mount
Lisa Mandle: Certain buttons on… card… on cardstock.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: And, I have some cellulose sleeves that I can, you know, protect them in.
Lisa Mandle: And so I started to look at some things that were, you know, kind of
Lisa Mandle: Just so exquisite, and needed to just be able to be looked at, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Or they need to be protected like glass. A lot of… I have a lot of glass buttons, and they're so vulnerable. They're glass, you know, and they're over 100 years old, many of them, so…
Lisa Mandle: You know, it's just crazy pants that they're still here in one piece, and…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Oh my god, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: I'm, yeah, I'm really, this is good, because I'm getting kind of the physical picture of how these things exist. So, when you're putting them on cards, or carding them.
Stephen Skorski: Those you then might sort of hang on the wall, or maybe have, like, easels or something like that, that…
Lisa Mandle: I mean, I think some people do. They'll put them in shadow boxes, and you know, put them behind glass, and stuff like that, and… I don't really have that kind of desire. I kind of want them just where I can pull them out and look at them, and know that they're…
Lisa Mandle: Available to show other people, or, you know, just…
Lisa Mandle: Really for my own pleasure, you know, more… they're all sort of…
Lisa Mandle: standing up in their sleeves in this one little box, you know? So it's… there's not that many of… you know, it's… more of my collection is in the little…
Lisa Mandle: little watchamajiggers, but, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, yeah, they're… they're… I… I found… I got a…
Lisa Mandle: There's just so much… there's so much about them. They're… they're so tiny.
Stephen Skorski: Well, yeah, so I want to hear… I want to hear more about, kind of, the why and the… the things you're attracted to, but I want to ask you one more kind of general question, because you… I think I have a sense of this relationship with… or experience with buttons as a 5-year-old.
Stephen Skorski: But now, when you hold the button in your hand now.
Stephen Skorski: What do you… what do you feel?
Lisa Mandle: Oh, golly, it's just…
Lisa Mandle: I'm gonna turn it over and look at the back of it. It's like, I just, there's a great… I think it's, maybe Ben Franklin wrote an essay, Two Ways to Look at a River, or something like that, where it's like…
Lisa Mandle: Once you're a boatman.
Lisa Mandle: You can't just enjoy the beauty of the river and the sky, because everything is either a warning or a… you know, like…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: you're reading everything in a different way, because it's… you're working it, you know, you're not just enjoying it. And so…
Lisa Mandle: I know too much about them to… they're… I'm just…
Lisa Mandle: I'm gonna turn it over and look at the back, first of all.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: Identify it. That's how I'm gonna identify it. It's not the front, but the back.
Lisa Mandle: So everything about a button is on the back of it. The date, the material, the everything.
Stephen Skorski: So, are you saying that… and I do want to hear more about that, like, kind of the technical aspects of it, but just… so, are you saying that because you've been around these things for so long.
Stephen Skorski: maybe that… initial… Magic?
Lisa Mandle: Gone. It's gone.
Stephen Skorski: It is gone. Wow, that's… and now… and now it's more of a cataloging…
Stephen Skorski: Type of… which is sort of, you know, very satisfying in a different way.
Lisa Mandle: It is.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: It's more treasure hunt-y, kind of. Mmm.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: Or… Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Or, what would it be? You know, like, where you're just trying to solve a puzzle, or…
Lisa Mandle: There's a nice, curious, mystery, problem-solving, material-defining, age-placing… I don't know, it's a… it's a certain…
Lisa Mandle: Very detective, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Well, look, okay, so then let's, let's… what, you know, what kind of label would you put… so I'm thinking about what you're telling me, and I know we're going to get into
Stephen Skorski: some more of… some more aspects of buttons, but I do, you know, kind of understand that there's kind of the historical part of it, there's the…
Stephen Skorski: you know, collector part of it, there's the artistic… right, there's all these things. So, when you think of yourself in relation to buttons, do you think of yourself as a historian, an archivist, a collector,
Stephen Skorski: an investor, you know, like, what are the label… what labels sort of sit well with you?
Lisa Mandle: I think I… I think I'm interested in the history, and I'm interested in…
Lisa Mandle: The history of human industry, and buttons are the story of that.
Lisa Mandle: So… Okay.
Lisa Mandle: So everything that we've ever invented
Lisa Mandle: That's become what we use to make anything.
Lisa Mandle: Ultimately, the last little detritus of that process is like, well, you know, we can make some buttons while we're at it.
Lisa Mandle: Which is pretty great, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, so, so tell me then…
Stephen Skorski: How about… how about this? Can you give us… ground us in the world of buttons?
Stephen Skorski: You know, give me just a brief… history lesson.
Stephen Skorski: As you understand it.
Lisa Mandle: I mean, they're, like, one of the oldest things that we need to attach, or make a closure, or connect things.
Lisa Mandle: So, they're very ancient. They're very old, and some, you know, there's evidence that they're… they're just an old part of being a human being. And it's around the world, and there are different names for them, and maybe some of the structural
Lisa Mandle: like, Japan has some really interesting things, and…
Lisa Mandle: ways that they, you know, toggle and connect in China. They have some really interesting ways that are really different from the West, but…
Lisa Mandle: It's still universal, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. Still, like.
Lisa Mandle: A really old, parallel… History can be wrought from any culture by looking at how their industries
Lisa Mandle: Evolved and developed through time and through history, and the button will be right there.
Lisa Mandle: Somewhere in it. We'll be somewhere.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Kind of a… a connector.
Lisa Mandle: For cloth, for ornament, for, for bags, for horses, for, you know, connecting on camels, on, you know, to carry packs, to…
Lisa Mandle: You know, these kinds of things in different sizes, you know, but it's an old thing.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: How, so how, how,
Stephen Skorski: I don't know, I don't know if the question is how important, but how,
Stephen Skorski: how attracted or stimulated are you by the history of buttons, you know? Is that… you know what I mean? Like, if I'm looking at a button, and it's beautiful.
Stephen Skorski: And there's, like, material innovation, but then there's the history and the story.
Stephen Skorski: of this, like, does that kind of, like, rise to the top?
Lisa Mandle: I think so. Yeah, okay. I do, I do. I think the history…
Lisa Mandle: I think the history is what's needed to do the identifying of the material to then get to the level of understanding what there is to appreciate about the particular button.
Stephen Skorski: Mmm.
Lisa Mandle: You know, it's, like, sequential or something.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. The way my brain works.
Lisa Mandle: kind of creates that substrate that I'm like, oh, okay, from here…
Lisa Mandle: Let's appreciate this for the, you know, how and when and why this could be fabricated at a certain time.
Lisa Mandle: Okay, so, like, I have these cards of some of my favorite buttons.
Lisa Mandle: That I, that I did mount, and
Lisa Mandle: I forget what they're called, I think they're called, like, Victorian…
Lisa Mandle: like, Victorian cellulite, maybe they're… oh, what is it? Oh, God, I'm gonna lose my brain.
Lisa Mandle: what is it for? A vest coat? Like a waistcoat or vestcoat buttons for men?
Lisa Mandle: menswear, it was just the… the buttons that men wore. First of all, wow.
Lisa Mandle: So much of the history is of gorgeous buttons, and they were worn by men. Yeah. It's so lovely, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Wow.
Lisa Mandle: But some of these are about…
Lisa Mandle: 12 pieces that go into the fabrication of each one, you know, like…
Lisa Mandle: A little celluloid ring, a tiny little ivoroid cutout, a little piece of glass, another little glass escutcheon, a rim, a reflective back. I mean, it'll be this whole thing, then the whole thing is on the back with a shank holding it all together. I mean, just ridiculous how many…
Lisa Mandle: You know, less than a half an inch.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, so they're dense… there's a density to them.
Lisa Mandle: Density, and solidity, and wholeness, yeah, they're really real, you know, it's really lovely. They're… they're so…
Lisa Mandle: Chubby, you know? You want to bite them. You want to bite them all, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Look, it's like a…
Lisa Mandle: Like a newborn… like a baby's, you know, chubby leg. Same category, like, I gotta bite that.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's great. Well, it's… okay, so we get the sound of buttons, and now…
Lisa Mandle: the potential.
Stephen Skorski: taste of butter.
Lisa Mandle: Well, and you know, you can identify a lot of things through the smell, like rubbing certain plastics, you'll, you know, get, like, either a camphor smell or a milk, like, casein is gonna have, like, a milky smell,
Lisa Mandle: Bakelite's gonna have more of a camphor-y kind of smell. I mean, just formaldehyde-y.
Lisa Mandle: So it's just so interesting, you know, that there is…
Stephen Skorski: Fascinating. It's like…
Lisa Mandle: I have a great book, Identifying Buttons Through the Five Senses.
Stephen Skorski: There's a book… there is a book like this?
Lisa Mandle: One of the most knowledgeable people that's still alive right now.
Lisa Mandle: And I got her book through… she's in a Facebook group, it's just a fabulous… it's hard to find, you know, like, I'm like, oh, I'm so glad I got that damn book.
Lisa Mandle: And.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, it's brilliant! I mean… Can you repeat the name of that book again?
Lisa Mandle: Let me, yeah, I think it's, identifying…
Lisa Mandle: buttons through the five senses. I should go, grab it while we're talking. But yeah, I mean, just…
Lisa Mandle: Because even for, you know, wanting to know whether something is glass.
Lisa Mandle: You can just tap it on your tooth, and you're gonna know right away.
Lisa Mandle: You know, that you're… that you're handling glass.
Lisa Mandle: So I think things like that are so interesting.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, again, you know, talk about, sort of, surprises within a conversation.
Lisa Mandle: Seemed like you weren't expecting that one.
Stephen Skorski: No, not at all, but this is why… I mean, this is why it's so fun and so interesting to talk to people who are into something at a level that I'm not. Yeah, right. Because I would never have described buttons as multi-
Stephen Skorski: It's just nuts.
Lisa Mandle: I didn't know, right?
Stephen Skorski: would have, would have dawned on me. So, oh, that's really fantastic.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, it's called, Plastic Buttons, How to Identify Them Using All Six Senses.
Stephen Skorski: Mmm, okay.
Stephen Skorski: I like that. Okay, I'm gonna have to,
Stephen Skorski: I'd have to see if I can. I suspect that's one of those, like, books that, if you do find it, it's probably, like, $300, right?
Lisa Mandle: I don't know, it's just…
Stephen Skorski: Like, 6 copies.
Lisa Mandle: Well, it's like a very, knowledgeable woman on button and button history, and her name is Jocelyn Howells.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And so there's… there's, like, a National Button Society?
Stephen Skorski: Which is kind of amazing. Yeah. Are you a member?
Lisa Mandle: Of course, and, and,
Lisa Mandle: You know, like, I'll get, a sort of…
Lisa Mandle: maybe quarterly report, you know, which covers different topics, and there are button shows in every state.
Lisa Mandle: Button clubs in every state.
Lisa Mandle: There's one in Hendersonville near me here, and I… I mean, I still haven't gone, but I know I can go.
Lisa Mandle: I don't know, it's just… there are so many…
Lisa Mandle: categories and people that are way more knowledgeable than me, that have been studying and collecting, or are really
Lisa Mandle: I mean, you have to have a lot of money, first of all, I think, to really be a collector.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: like, in this… in this realm, in the realm of button collecting, some… some things are just really… they're… they're just… they're… they're very dear, you know, and…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Some of them go… Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: No, no, I was gonna say, let's, let's get into it. Like, let's, you know, you've kind of shifted into kind of the deep end of the pool of button collections.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah. Which I… which I…
Stephen Skorski: love. So, okay, yeah, let…
Lisa Mandle: I got involved with all these Facebook groups and realized that I didn't… as much as I knew, I didn't know anything, and then I knew, oh man, I'm really… I'm really hooked, you know? Like, if that's where you are, you're hooked.
Lisa Mandle: And so, I, I just… Continue to this day to have buttons in my collection in
Lisa Mandle: in a grouping with what I think are other buttons of its type.
Lisa Mandle: And then I will learn, oh my god, that I totally misidentified that, or I totally didn't recognize the material of this.
Lisa Mandle: year after year, I'll just… something that'll just have gone right past me, you know, that I can't believe I didn't catch, that I didn't… that I completely misidentified. And I don't know why that matters, but it matters in something…
Lisa Mandle: as…
Lisa Mandle: vast, I think. You're never gonna get to the bottom of buttons and button collecting, because there's just billions of them.
Lisa Mandle: You know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sure that keeps, you know, I mean, it's one of the things that keeps any collection so interesting, is, you know, not only the chase, but the…
Stephen Skorski: you know, the fact that you know you're never gonna get to the bottom of that knowledge well. No.
Stephen Skorski: So, okay, so, so, before we hear about some of the specifics…
Stephen Skorski: and how you started, you know, kind of getting into Facebook, because I think one of the things about a conversation like this is… is someone might listen to this and think, oh my god, buttons are amazing, right? And then they… they kind of want to know, they don't need a step-by-step how to start, but I think through hearing your story.
Stephen Skorski: That kind of gives them a bit of a roadmap, so… when…
Stephen Skorski: Before we get into the specifics, maybe just tell us, when did you realize
Stephen Skorski: that you were collecting buttons, or keeping more buttons than other people, or was there a moment when you realized, like, oh, I'm consciously keeping these things, and they mean more to me than just this tin full of buttons?
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I think, you know, I was… I was, doing… I had gotten the phenomenal opportunity to… to… to be in a fashion show in Washington, D.C,
Lisa Mandle: At the Renwick Gallery, and it was one of these random things where girlfriends saw applications, you know, you can…
Lisa Mandle: submit drawings, and if you get the drawings, then you can be in the show. So it was, like, I was one of 10 people selected, and I got to, like, put my stuff on a runway at the Renwick Gallery. It was just phenomenal, and…
Lisa Mandle: I was gifted, like, $1,000 worth of material at… from G Street Fabrics, which is one of the most phenomenal fabric stores you've ever been to. It's, you know, in the DC area. It used to be in the district, and now it's in Maryland, but…
Lisa Mandle: Just… I mean, unbelievable cloth and wool, and I made this…
Stephen Skorski: So you were making clothes at this point?
Lisa Mandle: I was a clothing designer at this point.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, okay. See, I didn't realize that. So, so was this, was the clothing designer aspect of your life a way that you paid the bills, or was this, a hobby? Yes. It was, okay.
Lisa Mandle: Yes, I was… I was sewing, I started doing collection at my friend's vintage clothing store, and eventually I started a collection that I took to New York, and…
Lisa Mandle: started to sell at the different, you know, trade shows, and get boutiques, and accounts, and make orders for… I just called it Lisa Mandel, it was just my name, and so I did that for a while, and…
Lisa Mandle: And then I was doing some custom work, and I was doing bridal work, and so there were all these different things, and so I was already doing all of this work, and then my… my friend saw this ad, and I… and I went ahead and I got into this show, and…
Lisa Mandle: My mother's close friend sent me a baby jar, a baby food jar.
Lisa Mandle: Filled with black Victorian glass buttons.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: Filled, and they're small, so it was, like, probably 150 buttons in there.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, wow.
Lisa Mandle: And I was just overjoyed, and I used them, like, just decoratively, and embellished this gorgeous wool, kind of tabbard, like, vest thing I made, and… for the show.
Lisa Mandle: And,
Lisa Mandle: And I just was smitten with them, and I would make a lot of, covered buttons with everything I did, and…
Lisa Mandle: So I was using these kind of home-sew things. I don't know, it was kind of a funny…
Lisa Mandle: Mashup of trained and untrained and experimental and…
Lisa Mandle: Also kind of had a lot of
Lisa Mandle: training, so I had a lot of form.
Lisa Mandle: I'm like, I can do pattern making, I can grade pattern, so I've had a lot of training, you know, like, I know a lot of stuff about clothing, and construction, and design, so…
Lisa Mandle: it was sort of… I don't know, like…
Lisa Mandle: always a part of what I was doing was using buttons, and eventually started a collection called Only One. It was… it took years to do that, and when… once that happened, I was really starting to use
Lisa Mandle: I was building on that first collection of glass buttons, and once I had that going, I started to look for more antique buttons. They were easier to find in the wild. Everyone knew I wanted them, so I had so many friends sending me things, which was
Lisa Mandle: so special,
Lisa Mandle: And it just started to kind of, you know, snowball. It was so organic, really, how it all happened for a long time, and the next thing I knew, I just had an insane amount.
Stephen Skorski: That… that's awesome. Okay, so that, you know, you kind of have these… you have these childhood memories…
Stephen Skorski: And then you have this glass… this baby food, which are… which is so tiny, you know? And to think that there would be, like, 100 or 150 buttons in there.
Lisa Mandle: I know!
Stephen Skorski: That's, okay, so that's good. So, you know, we're getting the origin story.
Lisa Mandle: And those are called dimmies, or diminutives, when buttons are under a certain size, when they're under 3 eighths of an inch, they're called diminutive buttons, and so I had… I didn't know any of this at the time.
Lisa Mandle: But I had, like, scored an entire baby food jar of Black Glass Demis, and I'm like, yes!
Lisa Mandle: They're all on a card now, by the way. I do have all those carded. I still have them, and I have them all carded.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's so cool.
Lisa Mandle: I know.
Stephen Skorski: You have to…
Lisa Mandle: best.
Stephen Skorski: You took, you…
Lisa Mandle: You took them off the garment you put them on? And cut them. And so people would, for a long time, say, what are you gonna put these on? I'm like, oh, yeah, no.
Lisa Mandle: These don't go on anything, I'm just fondling them forever.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, that's… yeah, I'm getting a very clear picture, or a clearer picture. Alright, okay, let me ask you… so here's a little… we're gonna take a little intermission. Okay. And then we'll get right… then we'll… then we'll hit sort of the… the… maybe the more hardcore kind of collector questions, but…
Stephen Skorski: I did this… I started doing this with a person I know who collects movies, and I was like, let's make these kind of little quick-hitter questions, you know, no need for long explanations, just a quick…
Stephen Skorski: from the gut, like, this is the thing, right? And they're just sort of silly and fun, but I think they help us, you know, kind of understand you a little better. So, these are just instinctive, and we'll start real simple, and then, you know, we'll go back to our conversation and maybe take another break in a little bit, and kind of.
Lisa Mandle: Okay, this is so fun. Alright, so this is…
Stephen Skorski: This is quick, alright, so… Glass or Mother of Pearl?
Lisa Mandle: Glass.
Stephen Skorski: Alright, brass or Bakelite?
Lisa Mandle: Bakelite.
Stephen Skorski: Hand-carved wood or polished metal?
Lisa Mandle: Hand-carved wood.
Stephen Skorski: Tiny and delicate, or a bold statement?
Lisa Mandle: Tiny and delicate.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm, okay, smooth finish or intricate detail?
Lisa Mandle: intricate detail.
Stephen Skorski: Functional and hidden, or decorative and visible?
Lisa Mandle: Mmm…
Stephen Skorski: Decorative invisible! Alright, and the last one in this little round.
Stephen Skorski: Perfect symmetry? Or… Charmingly imperfect.
Lisa Mandle: Charmingly imperfect.
Stephen Skorski: Alright, great. That's awesome.
Lisa Mandle: That was fun. That was great.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I like, well, it's, you know, it's just, you know, people's choices and what they gravitate towards can tell us, you know, a lot of things, especially when reflecting back on those choices and seeing patterns and such like that.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so, you, you, you, you.
Lisa Mandle: You know what? I lied. I'd have to say tie.
Lisa Mandle: For glass.
Lisa Mandle: Class and mother of pearl are a tie.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, okay, okay.
Lisa Mandle: So.
Stephen Skorski: Isn't there always a third way on these yes or no's?
Stephen Skorski: Well, that's what we want, right? We love the gray areas.
Lisa Mandle: It's hard to commit.
Stephen Skorski: To one thing or the other, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: So, okay, so you're a button collector, and maybe, as you answer these things,
Stephen Skorski: maybe kind of think about someone who might want to get into it, right? So they… they need a little bit of the background, and so buttons have a value, and I think, obviously, we all kind of understand, you know, this idea of rarity,
Stephen Skorski: But I don't know that most people, including myself, understand…
Stephen Skorski: What rarity means in the button world?
Stephen Skorski: And is it just rarity? So when you're talking about these very expensive buttons, why are people paying for these, you know, really expensive things? And then on the other side of it, the absolute opposite end of the spectrum.
Stephen Skorski: could I put together a collection, that is inexpensive, but would give me, you know, equal amount of pleasure?
Lisa Mandle: Okay, absolutely, to the last question, you could put together
Lisa Mandle: The beauty of collecting buttons is people can collect whatever they love.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And, I think when people have the deep pockets, and they're, like, entrenched in a kind of…
Lisa Mandle: The button collecting world?
Lisa Mandle: there are competitions within the National Button Society and the button clubs throughout the United States and the world where button collecting goes on, where
Lisa Mandle: people are, creating… they're looking for, you know, getting acknowledgement for, like, like, blue ribbon kind of acknowledgement, so it's really wild.
Lisa Mandle: No monetary thing, you know? Just…
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Lisa Mandle: Together, a perfect tray, they call it, a tray of buttons in that world.
Lisa Mandle: And it's a certain size, I think it's, like, 9x14 is the card size, and…
Lisa Mandle: Having, getting, you can get measled, you know, where you misidentify something, or it's not really the right representation of what you're claiming the category of your tray is supposed to be, so people get very serious about…
Lisa Mandle: Really going deep into a different category, a specific category in the button history world, or in a specific material that they're…
Lisa Mandle: you know, very, I mean, there are things like Bethlehem's, pearls that I… I mean, I don't have one. They're so unbelievably carved, often religious, you know, stories and iconography, so they're… they're, like, they're not of interest to me anyway, but they're…
Lisa Mandle: They're gorgeous, but, you know, just way out… I mean, I just don't have the money, or… yeah, I would… I would never. And so some people just… that's all they collect.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm. Alright.
Lisa Mandle: these incredibly carved mother-of-pearl religious scenes, you know? Or, I don't know. Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: So what's, you know, I think on the low end, I think we've, you know, many people have been to flea markets and auctions, and, you know, we probably realized that we could probably get a jar full of buttons for 5 bucks, or maybe.
Lisa Mandle: Exactly. $5, $10, you get a jar, and maybe, you know, take your chance, see what's in there.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, so we kind of get that side of it, but what's the… how far does it swing the other way? I mean, you know, is it like, well, there's one button out there that's a million dollars, but really the expensive ones are kind of around $1,000, or are we, like, is it $10,000, $50,000, like…
Stephen Skorski: You know, where exactly is the high end of the market?
Lisa Mandle: You know, that's a really good question. I'm so bad about that kind of stuff, so I… because it's not my interest, you know, I don't have the dollars for it. I will say that there are really…
Lisa Mandle: Unique, jeweled, museum-level buttons that are just worth
Lisa Mandle: you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, because they're… they're just so old, and they're being preserved, and da-da-da-da-da. I mean, it's just like another realm.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And some collectors have access to that, but…
Lisa Mandle: I think for the most part, We're talking about, you know.
Lisa Mandle: Buttons can be, $150, you know, $80, mmm… There's a crazy…
Lisa Mandle: Fetish of, plastic buttons going on.
Lisa Mandle: around cult…
Lisa Mandle: manufacturer, which manufactured guns, and they used Bakelite, or the, you know, phenolic, whatever, urea, the urea makeup of a hard plastic in the handle, and while they were at it, they made some buttons. So they were some of the first Bakelite buttons.
Lisa Mandle: And they're so pedestrian, and like… And it…
Lisa Mandle: I always knew when I… I had a lot… I sold a lot of mine, but, you know, I remember the first time I found them in the wild, I was like,
Lisa Mandle: this is Bagelite, these are chubby chunky, you know, and I could tell by the sound.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And the weight of them, they were so dense. So that has, like, kind of… I think the factory burned down or something, and so there's this big, great mystery of what is an authentic, verified Colts button. And there's an entire group of so many people who are super into this.
Lisa Mandle: And they're obsessed with, like…
Lisa Mandle: finding cults, identifying cults, getting all the different colors, da-da-da-da, and there is one that is a cameo. It is just a plastic button.
Lisa Mandle: with a cameo, right? A lady's head profile.
Stephen Skorski: Yep.
Lisa Mandle: And it was two color contrasts, I think it was, like, pink and black, or something like that. Pretty weird color combo.
Lisa Mandle: I saw it was, like, $600 that button got.
Lisa Mandle: On eBay. Wow. That's a lot of money for a plastic button.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: So, it was like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's why they love it. So…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: You know, and I love that about it, but I'm not that interested in that part of it, so… it always makes it kind of like, oh my gosh, sometimes on the Facebook groups that are button groups that I like because of what I learn.
Lisa Mandle: there's just a little too much obsessing and fetishizing around these Colts buttons, where I'm like, alright already, you know, enough already with the Colts, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Oh, man.
Lisa Mandle: But I think if that's your kind of thing, that would be an entry, you know, for somebody.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: who's big into, okay, I can make some money off of this.
Lisa Mandle: And they're… they have a specific shank, they have a certain little… little knockout…
Lisa Mandle: circle on the bottom of the shank that lets you identify… you know, there's so many things that you have to really be able to identify, and so that's another part, it goes back to my, I guess, drawing background, learning how to look at something. Like, I think draw… I've talked to Katie about this.
Lisa Mandle: Like, drawing is learning how to see. Yeah. Writing is learning how to think.
Lisa Mandle: singing is learning how to hear, you know, how to listen, you know, it's like, so all of these… these things, they're… they're about, you know, really getting into the detail of exact curves of something. A lot of red…
Lisa Mandle: Plain, rounded top, plastic button with a shank out there.
Lisa Mandle: They're not all cults. So then, it becomes this, like.
Lisa Mandle: Oh, it's got this certain thickness and a curve, and see how thin it parallels out, and now… see how you can't see the shank? Oh, you can see the… all that.
Lisa Mandle: It just gets, you know, crazy pants. How… Gets deep.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, and…
Stephen Skorski: Well, that's great!
Lisa Mandle: way into it, which I think is cool, you know.
Stephen Skorski: Well, when I say it's great, I mean, it's nice that… There's a depth… to the hobby.
Stephen Skorski: Right? And you can find your depth in different areas, so if it's the history that's of, you know, real interest to you, great, you can go as deep as, you know, you want to in that. If it's kind of this, like, you know, again, treasure hunting, identification.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: you know, kind of very narrow and deep, or, you know, if you want to go wide and thin, you know, there's lots of different ways. And I think
Stephen Skorski: I think that makes for a great collectible, and the fact that, you know, there are expensive, but there's inexpensive. I really, you know, it's tough… it's tough when someone is, like, you know, collecting exotic cars, you know, because most of us can't…
Stephen Skorski: We can't get into that. We can't relate to it.
Lisa Mandle: Right.
Stephen Skorski: It's interesting to hear about or see for a really small amount of time, but something like this, you know, I mean, you could be a 5-year-old with a little allowance and start an amazing button collection.
Stephen Skorski: Or you could be, you know, someone with, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend and have an equally amazing collection, they're just different.
Lisa Mandle: Yes.
Stephen Skorski: So I love, I love, I love everything you're saying,
Stephen Skorski: tell me more about the button collecting world. Like, you've… you've alluded to Facebook groups and, kind of societies, and…
Stephen Skorski: competitions, maybe… help me understand… get a little clearer picture of what that is. With maybe a particular focus on the community.
Stephen Skorski: around these objects.
Lisa Mandle: I think, you know, I've never gone to any of these shows. The only time I went to a…
Lisa Mandle: I went many years ago, when I was living in Austin, Texas.
Lisa Mandle: I was working at a boutique, I was a shop girl.
Lisa Mandle: And I… I'd heard that there was a…
Lisa Mandle: a pair of women that have had a store in New York called Tender Buttons, which was a very famous
Lisa Mandle: button store on the Upper West Side, and they were very, like, the tiniest store with, like.
Lisa Mandle: Shelf after shelf after shelf with a gazillion, you know, boxes, really long, thin boxes, with what's in the box on the… on the face of the…
Lisa Mandle: Box, all stacked up, all filled.
Lisa Mandle: you know, all both sides of a narrow New York store, you know?
Lisa Mandle: just a fabulous store, and I knew that the owners were gonna be…
Lisa Mandle: at this show, this button and bead show, right at the, you know, whatever, convention center really close to where I was working.
Lisa Mandle: And I remember I got to work…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know what time. I was… my neck was so sore, I'd been bent over…
Lisa Mandle: boxes and boxes of buttons from all these different vendors and collectors, so people collect buttons all over the place, and then they go to these shows.
Lisa Mandle: And then they sell, and they trade, and then they meet with other collectors, and then they have, you know, competitions, and they have luncheons, and they have discussions, they have a special speaker about this topic, or that topic, or…
Lisa Mandle: You know, so…
Lisa Mandle: like, the focus or interest of, you know, each one can have a real wide variety of historical interest, you know, in the area, whether it's beads, buttons, buckles, you know, blah blah blah blah, so…
Lisa Mandle: I think I got a big start to my…
Lisa Mandle: I got a big jumpstart to collecting, going to that show, and going to the Gender Button Girls booth, and…
Lisa Mandle: Buying up somebody's old collection, where it was, like, $5 a card, where…
Lisa Mandle: There were, like, 75 to 150, you know, buttons on each card. A lot of dimmies, a lot of glass, a lot of…
Lisa Mandle: vegetable Ivory, which is, like, toga nut…
Lisa Mandle: Karoza nut. There's different words for it, but it's basically, like, fake ivory.
Lisa Mandle: oh gosh, I got so many great buttons from them, you know.
Stephen Skorski: They're, like, so cheap per card.
Lisa Mandle: You know, because of somebody else's collection, they were so overwhelmed with the best of the best, that they could look at something like…
Lisa Mandle: whatever they were selling me for $5 a card, and I'm like, whatever, they could care, and I'm like, oh my god! I can't believe this card is $5, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, it's lo- it's, it's nice,
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, you know, environment is interesting, right? If you're, you know, if you're in a place where there's…
Stephen Skorski: 100,000 buttons, someone's more likely to kind of sell you some good stuff at a reasonable price.
Lisa Mandle: I suppose.
Stephen Skorski: to, you know, kind of these, you know, kind of one-off shops where they have, like, two cards of buttons. You know, so with that, okay, so, so…
Lisa Mandle: I mean, for instance, they had, like, there's this… there's these really beautifully carved vegetable ivory buttons that I have maybe 3 of, 2 of in my whole collection of all the years I've been collecting. There was a bag
Lisa Mandle: of them that they had at their booth. There were probably…
Lisa Mandle: 55, 60 buttons in there, and they were gorgeous, and they wanted $45 for the bag, and I didn't… and I didn't get the bag, and I'm haunted by it.
Stephen Skorski: You know?
Lisa Mandle: like…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah…
Lisa Mandle: Why didn't I get those? They are so special. And they had a micro-mosaic, which are the tiniest little buttons that are… literally have little, tiny mosaics out of, you know, that fit on the face of a tiny little button with a little scene.
Lisa Mandle: Like a little Italian scene or something, like a landscape, or an architectural folly represented.
Lisa Mandle: I mean, just… Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, there's some crazy stuff. There's some crazy stuff people have put in buttons. I love it. The collector in you,
Stephen Skorski: That, you know, okay, so, okay, so, so I want to get more about the world, because it's interesting, like, as we talk about it, I can hear there's, you know, a bit of frustration, sometimes, you know, kind of the thing that got away,
Stephen Skorski: You know, you talked about competitions, so would you say that the world of buttons is generally a…
Stephen Skorski: You know, kind of fun, welcoming, supportive…
Stephen Skorski: Or is it, like, you know, a lot of competition, a lot of, sort of, if I don't have it, you know, you get it kind of… you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, do you hang around with your button friends and sort of enjoy wonderful conversations, or are you…
Stephen Skorski: Actively trying to get things before they do.
Lisa Mandle: This is such a good question! Gosh, you know…
Lisa Mandle: Okay, I had a friend in Austin.
Lisa Mandle: that knew I loved buttons, and she had another friend that she knew loved buttons, and she wanted us to meet.
Stephen Skorski: And I was like, I don't want to meet your friend with her, you know, weird arch. She probably glues buttons on, you know, plastic bottles. Fuck that.
Lisa Mandle: I'm using body language again. I'm sorry.
Stephen Skorski: No, you're fine.
Lisa Mandle: So, I just was so… You know, oh, please.
Lisa Mandle: And she just was like, no, you're gonna really… she makes art with her buttons, and da-da-da-da-da. I'm like, oh man, I just… it was the last thing I wanted, was to meet this person, and so I felt very…
Lisa Mandle: Oh…
Lisa Mandle: I've got my own thing, like, I didn't have button friends, you know? It was kind of like an annoyance.
Lisa Mandle: I think with my love, you know, I think anybody was like… it was like the friends that go on vacation and have the slide shows that you have to sit through, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Really? So people would come to your house, and you were like, sit down.
Lisa Mandle: Still in my body.
Lisa Mandle: Well, I mean, if I started to go on about it, I could tell they were starting to glaze over, you know? There's a limit, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Lisa Mandle: So this is fun for me. Two hours to talk about buttons. I remember, you know, like… That's awesome. Like, nobody wants to listen that long about buttons.
Lisa Mandle: So, anyway, I thought that was really funny that,
Lisa Mandle: I finally, surrendered. She came to my house, literally. She said, get your best box of buttons right now, putting them in the car.
Lisa Mandle: she literally did this, and drove me to this woman's house. We were really good friends still to this day.
Lisa Mandle: And she's a phenomenal artist, and .
Stephen Skorski: Wait, so, okay, so you, so you, you know, kind of get guilted and almost, and pressured into meeting this person.
Lisa Mandle: Yes, and it turns out…
Stephen Skorski: I spoke with your box of best buttons, and.
Lisa Mandle: Yes.
Stephen Skorski: You know, what is this other person bringing to the table that kind of broke down?
Stephen Skorski: marry her.
Lisa Mandle: She just knew so much, so much more than I ever knew there was to know. And I was so… whatever I thought I loved about him, I was just… I was just lit on fire when I met her. I couldn't believe what she…
Lisa Mandle: what she was telling me about what I had. It was the beginning of that, of like, oh, this is a… Look at this, you see that? Blah blah blah blah blah.
Lisa Mandle: So, it was… it was just… it was just thrilling to have somebody who, first of all, wasn't gonna glaze over and be bored, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Lisa Mandle: about whatever I was excited about, and then she had so much information and knowledge,
Lisa Mandle: And as it turned out, she was a phenomenal artist when it came to working with buttons, and she made these…
Lisa Mandle: you know, beautiful pieces, like, started with these little structures that were wire. She worked with wire, and so a lot of the things she used were buttons that had shanks, so that she could string them on the wire.
Lisa Mandle: And turn them out. Otherwise, she was using plastic buttons with holes.
Stephen Skorski: So she could, like, string them up like beads, but you'd never see the face of the button that way. And so she would string up the…
Lisa Mandle: buttons, making these, kind of, almost like log cabin or structural components to create walls out of all these different colored buttons, and she'd do either monochromatic or all of one material. I mean, they were gorge… they were these gorgeous contemporary art pieces made with wire and buttons, and
Lisa Mandle: And then she started working, like, making little forms, like, dress form, or a little body made out of all-black glass, almost like a, oh, I don't know, like a funeral piece. I mean, just beautiful…
Lisa Mandle: quietly sad things, or, I don't know. So, so she just was… she… she turned my weirdo, like, oh god, because there is a kind of, you know, S-H-I-T on a stick.
Lisa Mandle: kind of crafts with buttons thing out there.
Stephen Skorski: Completely, yeah, no, great.
Lisa Mandle: Right? And so, you know, it's just… no, it's just terrible, right? And so, when somebody's really making art, you know, I just was able to…
Lisa Mandle: See new ways to use buttons in a really artistic way because of her… our friendship.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's awesome.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: That is fantastic.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I'm gonna ask you more about that, but I want to take a little break again, and give you some of these quick hitters. So here we go. This is about 9 more of these, you know,
Stephen Skorski: Organized by color, or organized by era?
Lisa Mandle: Era.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Stephen Skorski: Now, this one you already answered, but displayed openly or tucked away carefully.
Lisa Mandle: Tucked away.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, yeah, that's really interesting that you… that that's the way you keep them.
Stephen Skorski: One rare, perfect button, or a jar full of random ones?
Lisa Mandle: Shar full of random!
Lisa Mandle: Damn.
Stephen Skorski: Alright, alright. A button that blends in, or one that demands attention?
Lisa Mandle: Mmm, depends on the application.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, alright, that's a push.
Stephen Skorski: Keep the mismatched button, or make everything uniform.
Lisa Mandle: Keep the mismatch button.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Stephen Skorski: Military uniform or Victorian dress?
Lisa Mandle: Victorian dress.
Stephen Skorski: Replace all at once, or one at a time?
Lisa Mandle: Mmm… Replace all at once!
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's interesting. So, mismatch, but… All at once replacement.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna replace, if you're gonna go to replace, if you want them all, you know, just do it. It's like a facelift, because it can change everything.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, totally.
Lisa Mandle: Place, and be where you were.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: If you're gonna do it, do it.
Lisa Mandle: A whole thing up.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're gonna…
Lisa Mandle: It's so dynamic, the option, right?
Stephen Skorski: Right. Okay, good, that was just a little, little, little quick, little quick side there.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so you're talking about making this friend. So…
Stephen Skorski: if somebody is… I mean, let's face it, the world is very difficult.
Stephen Skorski: It is not easy to make friends. It's not easy to find groups of people
Stephen Skorski: To share sort of a genuine interest, and learn, and… I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's one of the beautiful things about collecting. You know, you go to a record show, or a baseball card show, or whatever, a craft show, and you could tell that people…
Stephen Skorski: interact on a very different level. So…
Stephen Skorski: Do you… is this what you're finding at these shows, where, you know, someone's listening to this, or they're listening to your excitement and your story, and they want to kind of get involved?
Stephen Skorski: can they just kind of roll into one of these things and say, hey, you know, I don't… I don't really know what's going on, but I'm pretty, you know, I want to learn. I mean, are people really open to sharing their knowledge?
Stephen Skorski: Or is there a snobbery involved?
Lisa Mandle: I don't think there's a snobbery at all. I think that it's a really welcoming community. I think they're very interested in sharing. I think it's a lot of people with historic backgrounds or, interest in, eras of art and,
Lisa Mandle: There's a lot of lectures that happen at these things, where people do presentations about topics, and so…
Lisa Mandle: I think it's more of an educational component.
Lisa Mandle: there's a… there's buying, there's selling, there's trading, there's all that going on. But I think underneath it, there's a genuine interest in
Lisa Mandle: History, sharing information… Learning, identifying…
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: teaching,
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, like, even the woman who, in the Facebook group, that's how I found out about that book about the senses, identifying through senses.
Lisa Mandle: I think, you know, there's, like, a… a little bit austere, a little… people really know who the knowledgeable people are.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: In those groups, you know?
Lisa Mandle: And so they defer often, and, you know, there's a lot of respect for the people that really know
Lisa Mandle: that have their chops, you know? Yeah. If Jocelyn comes down on a… identifying a button in a Facebook group, that's… that's the word. I mean…
Stephen Skorski: Right, right.
Lisa Mandle: You know, I've seen people say to novices, this is… you're talking, you know, if Jocelyn says this, this is… she's the most knowledgeable right now on this topic.
Stephen Skorski: That's fair. You know, sort of…
Lisa Mandle: Read the room!
Stephen Skorski: No, but it's also great that the, when I… that the… that a person that has so much knowledge
Stephen Skorski: Is actively engaged with.
Lisa Mandle: Absolutely.
Stephen Skorski: The masses, so to speak.
Lisa Mandle: Absolutely.
Stephen Skorski: I don't think that's always the case.
Lisa Mandle: Right? There's, like, a buffering. Yeah. And I think there is some of that. There's… there's some people in the…
Lisa Mandle: in it that are, you know, I think they're tired, I think, of people that aren't real collectors, or…
Lisa Mandle: Don't really have what they think they have, and so it's exhausting for them, because they're so immersed in the…
Lisa Mandle: field of buttons and button collecting, that they're… it's just not worth their time, and they're tired, and so they may be a little bit more…
Lisa Mandle: They may seem brusque, or they may be pretty unavailable, except for very short, quick, yes, no, no, that's not what that is.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, you kinda get that. Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: I think in a lot of…
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I'm gonna give you that, you know, you're…
Stephen Skorski: Sure, it's like, you know, there's always, like, in movies about record stores, right, there's always, like, the stereotypical record store worker who's very, you know, just has no patience for the newbies that, you know, are like, you know.
Lisa Mandle: Exactly.
Stephen Skorski: coming in to buy, like, the kind of sweet pop song of the day, you know, they want people who are a little bit deeper into…
Stephen Skorski: You know, the music, and until you kind of break down their little facade.
Lisa Mandle: Exactly.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. Okay, I get it. That's helpful to kind of hear that. So, with your collection,
Stephen Skorski: Do you have any idea how many buttons you have? I mean, is there a number in your head? Or… too many to count?
Lisa Mandle: You know, it's so weird, like… Probably, you know…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know, 100,000 buttons? Something like that?
Stephen Skorski: Wow.
Lisa Mandle: I mean, it's gotta be a lot.
Stephen Skorski: That's a lot of buttons.
Lisa Mandle: It's gotta be, because if I've got, like.
Lisa Mandle: Not 100,000. What am I saying?
Lisa Mandle: Maybe… 50,000?
Stephen Skorski: Still. Still.
Lisa Mandle: It's a lot, you know, because every tray has, like, 30 to… 24 to 34…
Lisa Mandle: Little holes in it, little, like, puppies in it, and most of those have, you know…
Lisa Mandle: 10 to 50 buttons in them, unless they're really large.
Lisa Mandle: So… I'm so bad… And then some of them…
Stephen Skorski: I mean, we're good.
Lisa Mandle: is…
Lisa Mandle: I tried to figure it out at one point, it was like, if I charge a dollar button, I would make, you know, blah blah blah.
Stephen Skorski: Right, right.
Stephen Skorski: That tells us a lot, right? I mean, the idea that you can't count it easily…
Stephen Skorski: - gives us an indication of kind of the quantity.
Stephen Skorski: Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, it's so nuts, because some of them, it's just, you know, like, they're, like, run your fingers through them, like, you know, shell, all of one kind, you know, like, 20 different…
Lisa Mandle: varieties that I've got a lot of.
Lisa Mandle: mother of pearl, or whatever. I've got a bunch of black glass, you know, whole…
Lisa Mandle: Groups of just one kind.
Lisa Mandle: You know, where I've got 50 of each kind, you know?
Stephen Skorski: And that's just…
Lisa Mandle: The black glass box that doesn't have
Lisa Mandle: Metal, or it doesn't have carving, or it doesn't have any kind of a… it's very plain, you know, plain black glass.
Lisa Mandle: So there's many, many more trays of glass that I've got, or, you know…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. That aren't black glass, so it's just, it's, yeah, it's crazy.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, that's great, and it's amazing. So, so a couple of just, I guess, more technical things. Simple technical, for those who don't know. Are there essentially two different ways of attaching a button?
Stephen Skorski: The holes in the front, or the shank, is that what it's called in the back?
Lisa Mandle: Basically, yes. Okay.
Stephen Skorski: So that… that's helpful. So, okay, so…
Lisa Mandle: It's called a sew-through, either, you know, usually it's a 2 or a 4 whole sew-through.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, okay.
Lisa Mandle: Or sometimes it's a 5-hole, or a 6-hole, so there have been different…
Lisa Mandle: 20, you know, variations and even 3 whole buttons. Right. Yeah, so there have been some really sweet variations on that.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And then Shank is when… you're… Not seeing the thread.
Lisa Mandle: At all, you're just seeing the face of the button, and it's attached Underneath that face, and that…
Lisa Mandle: That way of attaching is called the shank.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: And there are wide varieties of shank forms.
Stephen Skorski: Huh.
Lisa Mandle: materials, so… That's where identification comes in.
Lisa Mandle: It's looking at the shank.
Lisa Mandle: Or at the… Way that the button was made if it's a sew-through.
Lisa Mandle: Like, it's a lot… it's, it's harder to find a sew-through glass, old glass button. They're very rare now.
Lisa Mandle: But there are many, many with shanks.
Stephen Skorski: Whoa.
Lisa Mandle: It's just interesting, what is more fragile, what, like, lasted longer?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: I have blown glass.
Lisa Mandle: buttons. They're little bubbles. They're air.
Stephen Skorski: They're insane, they're… and they're…
Lisa Mandle: They're really old. They're…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: You know, like, 120 years old, and they're blown glass.
Stephen Skorski: Well, okay, so that's fascinating. You have, you know, whatever this number is, 50, 100,000 buttons, but there are some…
Lisa Mandle: 50, to be safe.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, sure.
Lisa Mandle: 100 seems too giant. I can't imagine I had that many. But I could.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, I mean, hey, yeah, I mean, either way, it's a lot of buttons.
Stephen Skorski: So, in that collection.
Stephen Skorski: Are there ones that, you know, one or two or three that really have risen to the top.
Stephen Skorski: you know…
Stephen Skorski: You know, how… you know, you gotta get out of that house in 3 seconds, and you can only grab 3 bucks.
Lisa Mandle: I mean…
Stephen Skorski: Do those exist, or are you like, no, it's not really… it's not that kind of a collection?
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, that's, that's, that's a really good question. Yeah, I… like, I have… I think…
Lisa Mandle: And it's really hard for me to find this information now, but… My great-grandfather was a button…
Lisa Mandle: jobber. So he… He would… Connect… manufacturers…
Lisa Mandle: with makers, and I think he was in the…
Lisa Mandle: like, Cleveland area, up to, you know, like, Ohio, because this is where I'm from, Ohio. Ohio, and maybe…
Lisa Mandle: Pennsylvania, like, a certain district that he had where he… represented buttons, and so… I inherited some…
Lisa Mandle: Pretty amazing buttons from… my grandmother.
Lisa Mandle: On my father's side. That she must have inherited…
Lisa Mandle: From her father, or from her… yeah, from her father.
Lisa Mandle: And… like… I have these buttons that are… they're conical, shaped.
Lisa Mandle: Brass, enamel, I think they're Cloisonne.
Lisa Mandle: they have… Cut steel.
Lisa Mandle: Little, little cut steels, which are those little, angle cut, little… Individually riveted, little… little faceted.
Lisa Mandle: bits of steel.
Lisa Mandle: They, they're encircled.
Lisa Mandle: By these tiny little cut steels.
Lisa Mandle: I have giant ones that are maybe 2 inches in diameter.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: in spectacular color… I think they're Russian.
Lisa Mandle: They're so exquisite, and I have…
Lisa Mandle: like, a couple big, giant ones, and then I have a gobs of little babies.
Lisa Mandle: And they're so gorgeous, and the little babies have all the little cut steels and all the same detail, but they're tiny. It's just nuts.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: I think I might be grabbing those.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, okay. Now, okay, so…
Lisa Mandle: They're just so… they're just so… like, they're from my family…
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I think… and they're sort of in the same box with, also from my grandmother, a giant…
Lisa Mandle: really beautiful mother-of-pearl… Sew-through button with,
Lisa Mandle: like, an abalone button, sorry. So, that lustrous purple, like, purple and lavender and pink.
Stephen Skorski: Hughes…
Lisa Mandle: With, then, a… Cut, like, sail… a sailing ship.
Lisa Mandle: Carved in white mother of pearl.
Lisa Mandle: Attached with the little steel… cut steels.
Lisa Mandle: on the fa… like, giant, and those were also for my grandmother. I would be grabbing those.
Stephen Skorski: So the buttons you're describing, are really because of…
Stephen Skorski: Not only because, but family attachment is sort of a big factor in what you're grabbing.
Lisa Mandle: I think so. I think it's just so special to me that in all of this time that I've collected, that
Lisa Mandle: Way, way back in there, there were these things that were part of my family.
Lisa Mandle: And part of my, you know, my father's side, and there's just something really special to me about that. Like, I would… I wouldn't want to lose that, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, absolutely. Those are irreplaceable.
Stephen Skorski: So how much of… You know, again, any collectible has certain characteristics to it.
Stephen Skorski: The value, the beauty, the…
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: But how much of this… Do you think… Is tied to… family.
Stephen Skorski: You know, your early memories of being a child, playing with these, you know, kind of buttons,
Stephen Skorski: you know, what you're talking about, kind of learning family history through… you know what I mean? Like, how much of that do you think plays into your love of buttons?
Lisa Mandle: Oh…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know, I… I think… I think it's a…
Lisa Mandle: I think there's something endearing to me that it came… that there… that in the end, you know, as I, like… my grandparents were long gone, and so I couldn't go back and talk to them about it, so it was more like a…
Lisa Mandle: being able to contextualize something that I had loved for a long time anyway, it's almost like it gives this anchor to it. Where am I?
Stephen Skorski: June.
Lisa Mandle: Oh!
Lisa Mandle: So it's sort of genetic, or, you know… Yeah, of course.
Lisa Mandle: It's somehow… it's part of… it's part of my past, and so…
Lisa Mandle: Of course I would be. I don't know, it's just sort of…
Lisa Mandle: It's like a stamp of some sort, maybe.
Stephen Skorski: Interesting. I love the word anchor.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, because at the end of the day, these things are objects, right? Yeah. And so, some of them hold…
Stephen Skorski: energy or memories…
Stephen Skorski: where others don't, you know, so, yeah, that's inter… that's interesting. I mean, thinking of… I mean, I think so many people…
Stephen Skorski: if you're not in the button world, just think of buttons as sort of, you know, very functional. It's like a zipper, you know what I mean? You don't… you don't typically hear people, you know, going on in this sort of really poetic language about zippers. Now, they might, I mean, there might be somebody out there.
Lisa Mandle: But we're… It's true.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, but what you're talking about is very, very different. So, in your collection, again, you have a lot of them.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: what is there… is there a certain subset of your collection that you are actively adding to? One set… subset that you kind of love more than others?
Stephen Skorski: Or is it just, no, across the board, you kind of, you know, what you find, you like, you buy, you add to the collection?
Lisa Mandle: Well, I'm so poor. I've stopped collecting a long time ago. I just didn't have the money to buy anymore. And so, you know, maybe people will give them to me. It's so random, but very rarely something that…
Lisa Mandle: is like, that's exactly what I want. You know, it's more like people identify me as this person, that they know, or at a period… there was a period of my life where I did get some amazing buttons from people, because they knew that I was really actively collecting at the time.
Lisa Mandle: So yeah, I haven't bought any in a long time. It's so much more about the thing I think I said to you early in the conversation, where…
Lisa Mandle: as I learn more about a button, to me, there's a thrill about
Lisa Mandle: learning more about how to identify something by the back of it, or whatever, that'll suddenly connect to something I know I've got somewhere in my collection.
Lisa Mandle: And I've got it in the wrong… it's sitting with the wrong family. It is not in the right cubby, you know? I have misidentified it, and like I… when I was a child, like, my father telling me, if you can go and find
Lisa Mandle: this weird little toy. You don't have to clean up, you know. And I will go, and I will know exactly where to find
Lisa Mandle: The misidentified, and, you know, incorrectly.
Lisa Mandle: understood button, I will find it immediately and go, oh my god, I cannot believe I thought you were blah blah blah.
Lisa Mandle: And this whole time, you were something else. A lot of times, it's something, like, with, Horn.
Lisa Mandle: Very old horn buttons.
Lisa Mandle: Very old, hard rubber buttons,
Lisa Mandle: something… I can't remember what you call it, but there… there are certain materials that it can be really, really, vegetable ivory can be right in there, where you're not quite sure what it is, and you maybe have to get a loop out and be able to identify some of the…
Lisa Mandle: Characteristics of the natural material,
Lisa Mandle: So, you know, stuff like that, I think, is really, really exciting to…
Lisa Mandle: to understand. Like, for me, it's so much more about understanding
Lisa Mandle: what the material is, and what the era is. And so.
Lisa Mandle: I think… I think my biggest love is this… are the celluloid buttons.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, okay, that's interesting.
Lisa Mandle: They're very old. They're 100 years and more old.
Lisa Mandle: They are so clacky and fragile and hollow. They make an amazing sound when they clack together.
Lisa Mandle: That's how you identify them, for sure. How I identify them every time is like, oh, yes, this is a hollow little celluloid bubble of some sort.
Lisa Mandle: They're very beautiful in color, they're sometimes really modern, like, okay, I have a great book that my parents got for me when I graduated from art school, and it's called… it's just called Modern Art.
Lisa Mandle: And it's a book of, basically, painting.
Lisa Mandle: And… and the first date is, like, 18,
Lisa Mandle: 80, 1870, or whatever is the beginning of the modern movement, and I just remember being shocked. And I'd gone to art school.
Lisa Mandle: And I was like, okay, I don't really hold that as the beginning of the modern movement in my mind.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: at all.
Lisa Mandle: So, it's something like that, where I just cannot believe some of the things that have been produced at a certain time. They're just so…
Stephen Skorski: jazzy, or so modern-looking, you know? It's just like, how did you…
Lisa Mandle: How did you happen in 1910?
Stephen Skorski: Right, right.
Lisa Mandle: You know? How did this… you know, what board meeting was like, let's run 100,000 of those, you know? Like, how did this…
Lisa Mandle: how did this really cool button get made? You know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. So, would you say that you… Understand the world through buttons.
Lisa Mandle: Oh, man… No.
Stephen Skorski: No.
Lisa Mandle: No, I don't understand the world, but… understand… The ingenuity of… Handwork versus mass production, and
Lisa Mandle: The art of both of those, and the…
Lisa Mandle: History of both of those, I think, is really, really interesting when it comes to buttons.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, I mean, I… yeah, I get it.
Lisa Mandle: It's still about, like, how did this get made? You know, when was… when was the first molded glass? Everything before that would have had to have been carved glass, or cut glass. You know, so…
Lisa Mandle: When was… you know, just stuff like, how could we work with certain metals before we could work with certain metals, before we could…
Lisa Mandle: you know, it's just so phenomenal. And, like, I have a button… okay, I have a bunch of hard rubber buttons, and they all say.
Lisa Mandle: Goodyear, 1851, is the back mark. That's a… they call them back marks on buttons.
Lisa Mandle: To identify whether it's a manufacturer, or a date, or any other…
Lisa Mandle: thing that you know is a certain maker. And so, it doesn't mean that it's…
Lisa Mandle: an actual 1851 button. It just means that's the copyright for hard rubber.
Lisa Mandle: That Goodyear, you know, didn't even make the buttons, but they owned the copyright, so somebody was able to produce hard rubber buttons once tires were produced.
Lisa Mandle: And manufacture, there was this, you know, ability to mass produce something with hard rubber.
Stephen Skorski: And eventually it was buttons.
Lisa Mandle: So, I… I think with every single… the fact that every single industry is in some way related to
Lisa Mandle: Probably a button got made out of that.
Lisa Mandle: Same industry.
Stephen Skorski: Then, yes, it is… it is a lens.
Lisa Mandle: To understand the world in that way.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: So, from a historical perspective.
Lisa Mandle: Yes. At the very least. Industry, artistry, technology, technique, mass production, individual production. You know, there are things called studio buttons even today.
Lisa Mandle: somebody is an artist, and then they sign a button. But then there are, like, beautiful studio buttons going way, way back, and, you know, glass buttons. I think they're called Bimini…
Lisa Mandle: a certain artist, and then, leo Popper was a certain… glass…
Lisa Mandle: button maker, I think from the 20s?
Lisa Mandle: Had this very recognizable shank, only his buttons have this specific shank. I mean, I have, like, two.
Lisa Mandle: And they're tiny, they're not impressive-looking or anything, I, you know, it's just because I know the history, I'm like, oh my god, I have two little Leo Poppers, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: So it's stuff like that, you know.
Stephen Skorski: God, there's so, you know, there's so much to this.
Stephen Skorski: Well, but I mean, that's the beauty of it, so… No, I mean, really, I mean, you know, we've kind of, you know, without asking the direct question, you know, what are buttons made out of, right? You've talked about…
Stephen Skorski: You know, many different… many different, materials. You've talked about…
Stephen Skorski: You know, things that are added to, you know, like, you know, stones and such.
Lisa Mandle: Nope.
Stephen Skorski: She talked about mosaic buttons,
Stephen Skorski: It kind of touches on manufacturing,
Stephen Skorski: Some of them are artistic, some of them are almost like, you know, again, like, made out of tire material.
Lisa Mandle: Right?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, that's really… so I guess what I'm getting at is, there is… there's a lot to this that I don't know.
Stephen Skorski: So let me ask you this.
Stephen Skorski: What am I not asking that I should have asked you?
Lisa Mandle: Oh, golly, that's such a good question. Oh, man.
Lisa Mandle: I guess,
Lisa Mandle: when I think about, when I think about buttons, I wonder if people realize how…
Lisa Mandle: How many varieties of materials have been used?
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: to create buttons, and… how…
Lisa Mandle: So that's one… one thing I think about. But then, I also think about…
Lisa Mandle: I think it's because it's just on my mind, and I think it should be on everybody's mind. The whole shift into plastics, you know? We went into plastics.
Lisa Mandle: The whole world went to plastics.
Stephen Skorski: And you're against this, I'm assuming.
Lisa Mandle: Well, I mean, I think it's…
Stephen Skorski: Is that a fair, a fair assessment?
Lisa Mandle: I think it's like, you know, we've lost control of it a little bit, you know, and so…
Lisa Mandle: I think… I think it's one of those…
Lisa Mandle: There's a beauty to it, and there's things that you cannot do without it.
Lisa Mandle: And so, there's a necessity, and so…
Lisa Mandle: somewhere in all of it, there… I think that…
Lisa Mandle: modern button making, I think it's just a really… I don't know what I think about it anymore. Like, I think…
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: I think there are efforts to use, renewable materials more and more, and I think with the clothing industries, there's so much…
Lisa Mandle: rising up against the fast fashion industry, and so…
Lisa Mandle: You know, anything that has more…
Lisa Mandle: I don't know if I'm sure it matters, you know?
Stephen Skorski: If it's a plastic button or a shell button, you know, where are you sourcing it? You know, just could go forever with this.
Lisa Mandle: But I think that there is something…
Lisa Mandle: Really important about understanding what materials you're using on your
Lisa Mandle: Clothing, and near your skin,
Lisa Mandle: I mean, I have uranium glass buttons.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: That's cool.
Lisa Mandle: And I shine a black light on them, and they glow green. You know, which is cool, but, like, you don't want to eat out of your uranium glass dishes, you know?
Lisa Mandle: And so, there's, like, these… there's this interesting tension there, I think.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm…
Lisa Mandle: around… Oh, golly, I forgot the question. I think it's…
Stephen Skorski: No, no, no, it's fine. No, well, I'll tell you, you said something that kind of,
Stephen Skorski: tripped a thought in my mind. Okay.
Stephen Skorski: maybe in your collection, or in other people's collection, is there a living… living component to it? Meaning, these things don't just live
Stephen Skorski: on these cards, and in shelves, and catalogs, but, you know, there's a group of people who are like, no, no, I actively…
Stephen Skorski: find these, put them on my garments, wear them around. You know, it's a… it's a detail that, you know, that says something about me.
Stephen Skorski: to the world around, you know, who encounters… you know, is that happening? Because to me, that would be actually, I think, almost more interesting than anything.
Lisa Mandle: I think that there's still the fascination of having an authentic thing. There's a lot of historic recreation.
Lisa Mandle: And people that do… What do you call it, when they're creative anachronists and whatnot?
Lisa Mandle: where people are trying to get an authentic thing. And then there's the actual film, theater, opera. I mean, I've had for… I've sold buttons on and off at different times, like, I've sold…
Lisa Mandle: I remember selling a whole set to the, the opera in Tucson for,
Lisa Mandle: you know, I mean, just what a thrill to… they were like, we need these buttons, can you get them to us by a blah blah blah, and are they this size, and oh my god, you have the right amount, you know.
Lisa Mandle: So, I mean, there's just that kind of… it was historically accurate, it was something that they needed for a specific piece in an opera. I'm like, oh, that's fun, you know, that's…
Lisa Mandle: That's very much alive, and I think…
Lisa Mandle: In terms of, like, theater and film and…
Lisa Mandle: and all of that, I think there still is interest in… in maintaining accuracy.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: But that's… which is interesting, and I did… I did… about the only fact that I sort of learned about buttons was that there is a competition between button collectors and…
Stephen Skorski: like, Civil War reenactors, and because, you know, they want, you know, they want it for the authentic, you know, uniform.
Lisa Mandle: Right.
Stephen Skorski: You know, it's not the love of the button, it's just that, no, no, this is what it would really, you know.
Lisa Mandle: Right.
Stephen Skorski: so, there is that, right? I mean, certainly there's that, but is there a community of individuals
Stephen Skorski: who are not recreating anything, they're not trying to just have, you know, an authentic garment from the 40s. They're just trying to live in the present.
Stephen Skorski: With these small objects that add a level of detail, sophistication, design choice to what they're wearing.
Stephen Skorski: Or does that not happen anymore?
Lisa Mandle: I don't know.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: I don't know. I think that,
Lisa Mandle: A lot of times, you know, buttons were about…
Lisa Mandle: A closure on a fit, and…
Lisa Mandle: almost always a woven fabric. And we live in knits now. I mean, everything is a knit. Everything is a t-shirt fabric. Everything is…
Lisa Mandle: loungewear. I mean, there are certain others… I mean, I think in terms of haute couture and whatnot.
Lisa Mandle: it's there, but it's not what it used to be in a different era. Like, I don't think that…
Lisa Mandle: Buttons hold the… The cachet that they used to?
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: I think there are people who are interested in history, who are vintage lovers, who maybe are still keeping it alive, you know, and…
Stephen Skorski: Have we lost something because of this?
Lisa Mandle: I think… Possibly in that way that…
Lisa Mandle: everything is so generic, I think knit…
Lisa Mandle: Creates the blob, you know, it sort of… it sort of covers the body in a way that is just so blobby, where it's just very generic, and we can just sort of deny
Lisa Mandle: the unique specifics of the body, and we live in a kind of weird culture, too, where you're supposed to look a certain way if you wear fitted clothing. So, I mean, it's like a new thing to be
Lisa Mandle: A large woman in a fitted suit, whereas, you know, you would see different bodies in fitted suits throughout history.
Lisa Mandle: But we're sort of weird about it now, you know? Until we've started to get better about tolerance of size, diversity.
Lisa Mandle: You know what I mean? How it's like, we're right there. That's only just happened in terms of history, it's just like…
Lisa Mandle: We weren't, and now we are, you know, but it was just… just happened.
Lisa Mandle: So we don't… you know, we just kind of have this… Store-bought, uniform…
Lisa Mandle: cut and size, unless you have the money or the skill set, you're just sort of being fit into a very…
Lisa Mandle: Mass-produced industrial… Byproduct that we're all forced to dwell in.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Stephen Skorski: So we are losing something.
Lisa Mandle: I think so.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. I mean, I… I mean, I… what little I know about buttons, I'm surprised that more people don't…
Stephen Skorski: Incorporate them into you, just their daily…
Stephen Skorski: you know, kind of… I mean, we are fashion-aware, at the very least. It would seem like a fairly…
Stephen Skorski: inexpensive way.
Stephen Skorski: You know, not always, but, you know, you could, right? To kind of do something very different.
Stephen Skorski: You know, anyway, okay, that's interesting. Alright, let's do… let's do one last quick hitting round, and then we'll wrap it up with a couple of big questions, you know, kind of bigger philosophical questions, maybe. All right, now these are a little bit more, you know, sentence or two kind of answers.
Stephen Skorski: Most beautiful button you have seen. You don't necessarily have to own it, but it's the most beautiful button you've ever seen?
Lisa Mandle: I have only seen a photograph, and it would be a Lalique glass.
Lisa Mandle: button.
Lisa Mandle: of… I can't even remember if it was… I think it was… fluff.
Lisa Mandle: I wish I knew the exact flowers.
Lisa Mandle: Represented, but it was just exquisite.
Lisa Mandle: translucent, and… Lustrous, and, yeah, just…
Stephen Skorski: Was it painted, or three-dimensional, or how.
Lisa Mandle: What do these…
Stephen Skorski: flowers.
Lisa Mandle: Well, Lalique worked in the glass itself, so it would have been in the glass.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: Well, so, hi! Hi, Art!
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: museum art, not… Okay.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: A single button wasn't made as a set of buttons, this was sort of a one-off.
Lisa Mandle: It might have been, but probably not, you know, just such a… Ugh.
Lisa Mandle: Beautiful, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Cool, alright.
Lisa Mandle: Mastery. Mastery of glass.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm…
Lisa Mandle: work.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: So maybe this is…
Stephen Skorski: Maybe this is the same answer, but, what's the rarest or most valuable button you have encountered?
Lisa Mandle: Gosh!
Lisa Mandle: I have… what I have been told is probably the oldest button in my collection, and I think it's…
Lisa Mandle: horn… And it's just… I think it's from the Civil War, so it's not really very old.
Lisa Mandle: But it is really old, right?
Stephen Skorski: Certainly.
Lisa Mandle: And it's plain! It's just a plain… Round, golden…
Lisa Mandle: Horn with a, like, a metal… Looks like one of those…
Lisa Mandle: toggles we've used to open and close manila envelopes, you know, where it's like a little brass top that pokes through, that kind of a thing, where it's a little loose, you know? That little brass circle on the face of the button?
Lisa Mandle: is loose going through with the shank on the bottom, on the back side. Okay. The shank is very long.
Lisa Mandle: Which also shows the age, so it's a very long… Sticks way out from… the button.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm. Okay.
Lisa Mandle: You know, a lot of times shanks are kind of short, you know, you don't want it, like, flopping over, you want to just kind of, you know, grab it and hug it to the cloth and put it through the buttonhole kind of thing.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, okay, so that's the rarest, maybe.
Lisa Mandle: that I… that I have in my own collection, I mean, sick…
Lisa Mandle: I love the books that I've got from that woman that I was sharing about earlier, because she'll…
Lisa Mandle: She'll go through all the different
Lisa Mandle: Button Materials, it's another book that she has.
Lisa Mandle: That she's produced, that I've got, that's just a button material.
Lisa Mandle: identification book.
Lisa Mandle: and… She'll go through and tell you, like, what the values of things are, just gen… like…
Lisa Mandle: Not in terms of money, but in terms of… really available. Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: so crazy rare. Right, right, right.
Lisa Mandle: You know, that kind of a thing. Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: So I… I have more learned about some things, and I'm like, wow, wouldn't this be amazing to find this?
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, it's just insane how many there are.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, alright. How about a button you… a button you regret not buying?
Lisa Mandle: Hmm… It would… oh, man.
Lisa Mandle: There's too many of those.
Stephen Skorski: The one that got away, what floats through the surface, kind of just immediate sort of thought.
Lisa Mandle: Oh, golly, I'm just gonna go back to the bag of vegetable… of the vegetable ivory.
Lisa Mandle: cut buttons, I mean, I… or the, you know, the… it would be the micro-mosaic, I can't believe I let it go.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, alright, great. Most unusual material you've seen used for buttons?
Lisa Mandle: Oh…
Lisa Mandle: Huh.
Lisa Mandle: Okay,
Lisa Mandle: So, there's this whole group of… plastic…
Lisa Mandle: Buttons that they… they… they just look like… I don't know.
Lisa Mandle: There, so that's not your question. Your question is the weird material.
Stephen Skorski: Well, most unusual button you've seen, material you've seen used for buttons.
Stephen Skorski: And again, just, you know, top, top of your, you know, the instinct, you know, just kind of, kind of just comes up, and you go, oh my god, that one time I saw this, you know.
Lisa Mandle: I guess, you know, rattan, like, rattan. I can't believe there are rattan buttons.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, that seems odd.
Lisa Mandle: Right?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, totally. It's weird. It's a weird material.
Lisa Mandle: fragile, and scratchy. So, like, oh, scratchy.
Lisa Mandle: Like, I cut tags out. I do not like labels on my back of my neck, so the thought of a rattan button is just like, ugh. I just have to immediately, like, scrunch my shoulders up around my ears.
Lisa Mandle: What is it?
Stephen Skorski: Historical era that produced the best buttons.
Lisa Mandle: Oof.
Lisa Mandle: I would say… Like, right at the turn of the century, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: like, the gay 90s, and into the teens that, like, right? There's, like, a 20-year…
Lisa Mandle: Period where there's unbelievable artistry, diversity in materials.
Lisa Mandle: And just so splendid. So splendid. So, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Okay. Yeah, I like that.
Stephen Skorski: What, if you could design your own signature button?
Stephen Skorski: What would it look like?
Lisa Mandle: That's a great question.
Lisa Mandle: You know, zinnias?
Lisa Mandle: When they're budding, You know, there's answer.
Stephen Skorski: But I imagine it's a very beautiful flower, that…
Lisa Mandle: Okay, so zinnia flowers are, like, so…
Lisa Mandle: everyday pedestrian, they're just like, I'm a flower, I'm so cute!
Lisa Mandle: And they're colorful, and they're fabulous, but when they're butted up, and they're about… and they haven't opened yet.
Lisa Mandle: They are this tight little nut. They almost look like an acorn, you know, the way the acorn has, like, little… kind of goes down in its sections, but it's a little more fish-scaly, a little bit more sort of ascending, descending from big to small toward the…
Lisa Mandle: how do I say it? It's like little… little rounded…
Lisa Mandle: Lobes that, together, you can see the break where it's eventually gonna open up.
Lisa Mandle: But all you see is the potential of all that… of all those petals inside of that tiny little bud.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Lisa Mandle: And when you look at it from the side, you can see it, but when you look at it at the face, like, turn it to, like, just at the top of it.
Lisa Mandle: It's so… Concentric, like, oh, very… what's the word for circular designs?
Stephen Skorski: You mean, like…
Lisa Mandle: Like, look.
Stephen Skorski: Like, the opposite of rectilinear, like… engineer.
Lisa Mandle: to.
Stephen Skorski: People always say organic, and I kind of think that's a silly word, because it just describes everything.
Lisa Mandle: Right. No, I'm thinking… not like a labyrinth, but when something's a circle, and you're going around and around, and it's like a certain design you make, use it as a meditation.
Lisa Mandle: I can't think of a word.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, like, well, I mean, there's, like, prayer labyrinths that are, sort of.
Lisa Mandle: Yes.
Stephen Skorski: route, yeah.
Lisa Mandle: It's kind of got that feeling to it, where…
Stephen Skorski: It's just…
Lisa Mandle: The most unbelievable order And it's in every…
Stephen Skorski: Oh, like a fraction.
Stephen Skorski: Kind of thing.
Lisa Mandle: Like what?
Stephen Skorski: Like a fractal, sort of…
Lisa Mandle: Kind of like a fractal, and… So…
Lisa Mandle: and the potential and that life force inside of that design form, and I've… I've looked at that.
Lisa Mandle: Certain phase in the development of…
Lisa Mandle: you know, a budding zinnia flower, and thought, oh my god, that would make a gorgeous button. I've thought that over and over throughout my life, like…
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Stephen Skorski: So your button is about the infinite and potential.
Lisa Mandle: There we go, that would be my button.
Stephen Skorski: Awesome! Alright! Okay, so last two, kind of just big, big… well, maybe not too big picture, but,
Stephen Skorski: you know, I've heard you kind of talk about a lot of different ways of sort of approaching and working with and kind of interacting with buttons, and so…
Stephen Skorski: Maybe one of these, kind of… is the collecting more about… Control… Preservation, nostalgia, or something else.
Lisa Mandle: I think it's about joy, just the joy of pattern and color, material, sound.
Lisa Mandle: like… When you asked a while back, of… how… how I…
Lisa Mandle: whether I organized by color or by era, and I said era.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: That's the me now.
Lisa Mandle: For a very long time.
Lisa Mandle: I organized my buttons by color.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And I had no idea what the materials were.
Lisa Mandle: And so, it's this delightful… Strange place of not knowing the name.
Lisa Mandle: of the different materials, not knowing what I was looking at, and just loving them, and just grouping them by color, and how everything shifted when I understood
Lisa Mandle: what I had, and it just stopped being about that. It just started to be about… Understanding, like.
Lisa Mandle: I love understanding what something is that I've had forever, and I thought it was something else.
Lisa Mandle: And now I understand what it is.
Stephen Skorski: Okay. That's great. Certainly, I could read… could… could read bigger picture into that, right? I mean…
Lisa Mandle: Ain't.
Stephen Skorski: I love that. Okay, so just one last thing, you know,
Stephen Skorski: If somebody wanted to start collecting buttons tomorrow.
Stephen Skorski: What advice would you give them? Or what should they look for? You know, with all of your years of experience and wisdom in this field?
Stephen Skorski: What would you… what would you tell your younger self? Maybe that's a better way to say it.
Stephen Skorski: What do you tell your younger self, who's just sort of on the cusp of Collecting these things.
Lisa Mandle: I mean, I think it's just like anything, like, just checking in with, like, what… I would want to ask the person what is their…
Lisa Mandle: what is their drive? Are they… are they looking…
Lisa Mandle: For something to learn about, or are they looking for something to…
Lisa Mandle: make money from, because people collect for really different reasons.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: And in the button world, you know, if you have a certain amount of money, you're gonna wanna kinda get certain things, you know, but it…
Lisa Mandle: Even those collectors will tell new collectors.
Lisa Mandle: Collect what you want! Collect what intrigues you. Collect what you're drawn to.
Lisa Mandle: And I think I would just say that, you know, whatever…
Lisa Mandle: It's an entire world, and it's a deep well, and…
Lisa Mandle: Look at your budget and decide where you are in it, you know? I think that that's… I think I'm too realistic now, I'm not as naive, and…
Lisa Mandle: I mean, I think that for years… I mean…
Lisa Mandle: I've never spent a huge amount.
Lisa Mandle: on buttons… like, I've been really frugal, more because I just didn't have the money.
Lisa Mandle: And so, for me, it was just… if I could find something that was really spectacular.
Lisa Mandle: It was more about, like, a thrifting feel, like, oh my gosh, look what I found for $2, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, sure. Treasure hunt.
Lisa Mandle: So, it's more about the hunt, I think. Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: And so, just decide what it is you love, and what you think is curious and wonderful, because there's a lot out there, and every single category.
Lisa Mandle: Could be, you know, just all that you… ever collect.
Lisa Mandle: There's just so many, there's so many materials.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: Lots of roads.
Stephen Skorski: Lots of roads you could go down.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah. I mean, I have really old…
Lisa Mandle: Paper mache buttons with inlaid mother-of-pearl flowers.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Lisa Mandle: Like, little sh… metal shank.
Lisa Mandle: black face, and the black part is papier-mache, and they're Victorian. I mean… How are they still…
Lisa Mandle: I was just like, how do I have those? You know?
Stephen Skorski: Right. And this brings you joy.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I just think it's so spectacular that they're still around.
Lisa Mandle: And they're so old, and I can hold them.
Lisa Mandle: Like, I remember when I was a painting student.
Lisa Mandle: I was studying watercolor for a little bit, and my teacher
Lisa Mandle: could see that I was a bigger painter, and he was like, you need to…
Lisa Mandle: you need to get a bigger brush, and so you got me to buy this really wide, sumi kind of, you know, Japanese watercolor brush. It was like a paddle. It looked like a ping pong paddle cut in half.
Lisa Mandle: Like, a lot of horsehair bristles stuck in out of it.
Lisa Mandle: And, it was a great brush, and it was like, okay, and then you should go and look at
Lisa Mandle: because I was in D.C. at the time, he said, you should go and look at the plum branch. It's a painting…
Lisa Mandle: at the Freer Collection.
Lisa Mandle: And he's like, I want you to look at that painting. It's a scroll painting. And so, I just took his…
Lisa Mandle: suggestion for, you know, very legitimately went to the museum, and I asked if I could go down to their… where they're curating and, you know, have all their archives in the basement of the building in the Smithsonian, and…
Lisa Mandle: I talked to this gentleman in a lab coat, and he was like, when would you like to have the appointment? I was like, oh, can I see it now? You know, I was just a dumb student.
Lisa Mandle: you're supposed to make an appointment and have a minimum of 3 and maximum of 6 people, and you go and sit in this very austeres environment, and you're, you know… I actually went and looked at Japanese pinch pots there from the 10th century one time, so it was a phenomenal resource where
Lisa Mandle: I can't believe we're holding these 10th century pinch pot tea ceremony pieces! What is going on here? And so, I got to go and look at this scroll.
Lisa Mandle: This beautiful scroll painting, just because I was a dumb student, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: And, I'll just never forget, you know, that…
Lisa Mandle: That's sitting in this beautiful environment with a huge collection and so many…
Lisa Mandle: so many people just fetishizing around objects and whatnot, and I got to look at this beautiful scroll painting.
Lisa Mandle: And it was… In a box, it was in a drawer, in a box, Beautiful silk box.
Lisa Mandle: covered in… you know, bias pieces that were all… and then little Japanese
Lisa Mandle: I guess ivory? It must have been ivory, or tusk of some sort.
Lisa Mandle: little… little findings that closed the lid on the box, and you open the box, and in the box were these puffed sections with the scroll rolled up in a bag, and you opened the silk bag with the tassels, and slid out the scroll, and went to this velvet-covered thing, and opened it up. Why am I telling you this story? I can't even remember the start, but…
Lisa Mandle: Yeah.
Lisa Mandle: No, that's awesome.
Stephen Skorski: No, that's great. You know, certainly a joy, a love of kind of what you're surrounding yourself with, the importance of details, you know, kind of that's coming through, and the things that you're describing.
Stephen Skorski: connection to history, right? I mean, there's lots of things that you're talking about, in all of these stories that, you know, this thread that kind of just runs through, everything. So that, I mean, that's such a… it's such a great way to introduce somebody to.
Stephen Skorski: This world of buttons, so…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I mean, it's been great, it's been great, you know, learning, learning buttons through your experiences. I, I appreciate the, you know, I appreciate the time and the expertise and, you know, kind of going into depth about what these things mean to you.
Lisa Mandle: Mmm… it's just been so… Exciting!
Lisa Mandle: just to get a minute to realize, like, oh my god, I've been doing this for a really long time, I've been collecting for a long time, I didn't even realize…
Lisa Mandle: what I would be saying, you know, until we were talking, so this was…
Lisa Mandle: This is really, really fun. Thank you.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, thank you. I mean, again, it's, you know, I enjoy it, you know, for lots of reasons, you know, the kind of getting to know somebody, the getting to know a new field of collectibles,
Stephen Skorski: But then, you know, anyone who listens also gets that, you know, kind of the benefit of hearing your experiences, and I don't know, I mean, I think the thing about collectibles that's so interesting to me is
Stephen Skorski: The community kind of aspect of it.
Stephen Skorski: And so it's a, you know, it's kind of a little bit of a shortcut, maybe, or a little life trick, where…
Stephen Skorski: you can find, not always, but, you know, you're more likely to find some of your people, you know, in a thing, you know, in a world of things that you love. And so there's something really fantastic about that. So, you know, I appreciate your,
Stephen Skorski: you know, description of the world of buttons, and sort of what it means to an individual, but what it means to, you know, a group, and really how it ties you to history. I think that's really fantastic as well.
Lisa Mandle: I love that. I… yeah, it's been really…
Lisa Mandle: Really fun to share this with you, and…
Lisa Mandle: I'm so glad we got to spend this much time together. It was really, it was, I was really…
Lisa Mandle: honored to get to talk to you for this long, so thank you, Steven.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, you're welcome. Well, thank you, Lisa. I hope that the rest of your evening is fantastic.
Lisa Mandle: Well, same!
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, thank you. Gonna go grab some dinner or something like that, so…
Lisa Mandle: Right?
Stephen Skorski: Prep for tomorrow, yeah, absolutely.
Lisa Mandle: No, this was fantastic.
Lisa Mandle: I… I'm… I'm really grateful. So, yeah, same to you, and oh my gosh, I mean, just a whole other sub…
Lisa Mandle: subtopic someday, I wanna… I would love to hear about your collecting, and…
Lisa Mandle: we have so much overlap, and I know you have an interest in books, and…
Lisa Mandle: So I just… I would love to hear about what your book collecting is about.
Lisa Mandle: We should…
Stephen Skorski: So…
Lisa Mandle: We should chat someday again.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I know you, I know, I know you have other collections, you know, there's a few others that, you know, so, yeah, no, absolutely. That, that would be, very nice.
Lisa Mandle: Yeah, I have a huge pop-up book collection.
Stephen Skorski: That's… yeah, that's what I heard, so we'll have to, we'll have to do a round two at some point.
Lisa Mandle: I know, right? Well, have a lovely evening, and stay… stay warm wherever you are, and, I hope you have a great night.
Stephen Skorski: Awesome. Thanks, Lisa. Alright, well, have a great night.
Lisa Mandle: Okay, bye!
Stephen Skorski: Bye-bye.