porcelain, painted · 17 mm · c. 1882
porcelain biscuit, painted under glaze: a red bloom, two leaves, a darker dot at the heart. the brush that did this was three hairs wide. you can see, very faintly, the moment the painter lifted it on one leaf and started another stroke a little too far to the left. she did not correct it. she was paid by the dozen.
this was the second of six on a summer-dress made for an aunt-to-be who did not, in the end, become an aunt. the dress was kept folded in tissue for sixty years, then unpicked for its lace, and the buttons were taken off and divided among the cousins. you got one. the other five are in five other drawers in five other houses; you have not seen any of them.
a button can be the trace of a wedding that did not occur. it is not, in those cases, a sad object. it is only the last surviving fact of a sequence of summer afternoons, and it is too small a fact to keep sad.
field-note · the red is still red. red made before 1900 with cadmium does not fade. the leaves have gone slightly grey; their pigment was not as honest.
velvet · pearl · letter · memory · sewing room