In March 2012 I had a custom order for glass clay buttons for the Kansas State Button Society. I designed the button with input from my grandmother’s button group, made a silicone mold into which I pressed the glass clay, hand built the button shank, hand painted each button, and fired them in batches in my kiln.

Making larger batches is a completely different animal than designing a single component. The glass clay was fun to play with, but was brittle, so the buttons were decorative more than functional.