• Please list all of the research you have carried out so far:
• Trip research:
- Visit to Duttons for Buttons in Ilkley
Interview with shop worker and 2 customers
- Photo of the button room
- Observational sketches
- Rubbings of buttons and the outside shop
- Purchased ephemera (buttons, canvas bag, cards)
- Sound map of the shop bell and customers talking
• Online Research:
- Psychology of collecting / surrounding ourselves with tokens, totems, souvenirs
- History of the button and interesting facts (biggest button collection, oldest button, largest button, etc.)
- Phobia of buttons (koumpounophobia) and causes - failure to do up buttons, hair getting trapped in buttons)
- Questions to a sufferer of button phobia
- Button groups on Facebook
- Questions to button group owner on Facebook
- Button Societies
- Duttons for Buttons history
- Research into object therapy and how buttons can be therapeutic / comforting
• Library Research:
- The Complete Button Book by Lillian Smith Albert and Kathryn Kent
- The Button Maker by Sarah Beaman
• Which of these research activities have you found the most useful and which were the most challenging? Why?
- I found visiting the button room in Duttons for Buttons really useful, so that I could understand first-hand that feeling of power and awe by being surrounded by so many buttons. The sheer amount of them was overwhelming and an experience I could only feel by undertaking my trip.
- Frottage rubbings of buttons gave a different visual representation, rather than just photos or sketches, that I found most interesting.
- Purchasing physical buttons that I can hold to understand why people find them therapeutic, healing and soothing has helped on a tactile level of understanding.
- Talking to people and learning of their individual experiences of obsession, indifference or fear of buttons and the origins of that has helped to shape my work.
• What is your intent for this project? Having full creative freedom over the content and image making, how do you want your work to function? Is it funny? Melancholy? Diagrammatic? Persuasive? Ambiguous?
- My intentions for my picture book is to highlight aspects of human interaction with objects, all through a colourful, charming and playful way - with beautiful yet simple illustrations akin to the work of Louise Lockhart and Ben Javens. I enjoy their storytelling through blocks of colour and shape with a textural aspect through digital or risographic alteration.
• Please describe the idea / theme central to your project (currently) and how this has been informed by your research? This doesn't need to be definite or detailed.
Through the research I have collected so far, my central ideas are leaning towards 'buttons for good'. I'm unsure of whether the overall subject matter will pertain to either the positive feeling that buttons give people through societies, groups, gifts, keepsakes, memories, etc. or through Pearly Kings and Queens - but the core of the project is there; buttons that make a positive change. These ideas have been informed through an extensive, flexible and open-minded approach - willing to uncover new things throughout the entire research process rather than stick to the first line of enquiry for an easier solution. Interviews, sketches and online research have provided me with a solid foundation.
- Frottage rubbings of buttons gave a different visual representation, rather than just photos or sketches, that I found most interesting.
- Purchasing physical buttons that I can hold to understand why people find them therapeutic, healing and soothing has helped on a tactile level of understanding.
- Talking to people and learning of their individual experiences of obsession, indifference or fear of buttons and the origins of that has helped to shape my work.
• What is your intent for this project? Having full creative freedom over the content and image making, how do you want your work to function? Is it funny? Melancholy? Diagrammatic? Persuasive? Ambiguous?
- My intentions for my picture book is to highlight aspects of human interaction with objects, all through a colourful, charming and playful way - with beautiful yet simple illustrations akin to the work of Louise Lockhart and Ben Javens. I enjoy their storytelling through blocks of colour and shape with a textural aspect through digital or risographic alteration.
• Please describe the idea / theme central to your project (currently) and how this has been informed by your research? This doesn't need to be definite or detailed.
Through the research I have collected so far, my central ideas are leaning towards 'buttons for good'. I'm unsure of whether the overall subject matter will pertain to either the positive feeling that buttons give people through societies, groups, gifts, keepsakes, memories, etc. or through Pearly Kings and Queens - but the core of the project is there; buttons that make a positive change. These ideas have been informed through an extensive, flexible and open-minded approach - willing to uncover new things throughout the entire research process rather than stick to the first line of enquiry for an easier solution. Interviews, sketches and online research have provided me with a solid foundation.
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