horn · 16 mm · c. 1925
cattle-horn, pressed dark, cut into a disc, drilled twice. horn smells faintly of itself when warmed, even after a hundred years — the smell of a comb left near a radiator. this one has been left near radiators many times.
it fastened the front of a heavy work-jacket: someone's father, then someone's grandfather, then a length of cloth that became a dog-blanket. the button outlasted each iteration and was set aside three times. the first hand that did so was the great-aunt; the second, your mother; the third, you, at the kitchen table, sorting the tin by feel rather than by sight.
keratin is what fingernails are. holding the button is closer than it should be to holding a small piece of someone. you tend not to think this in those words.
field-note · the grain runs not quite straight; the animal was not symmetrical. neither was the jacket.
bone · velvet · sewing room · kitchen