# Sewing tin

> Every button the family ever cut off a coat.

https://vitrine.themes.dev/collection/sewing-tin/

- Made by: The family
- Date: 1920s onwards
- Material: Tinplate, wood, cotton, brass
- Size: 20 cm across
- Cost new: A biscuit tin, reused
- Came from: Dorothy Merrin’s house, 2009
- On view: Made to Mend, at the end of the case

Buttons were cut off clothes before they were thrown away, so a household tin is a record of every coat a family wore out. This one holds 412 buttons; we counted them for the exhibition and then put them back in the same order.

The thimble is brass and worn through at the top. Whoever used it pushed the needle very hard, very often.