The Little Button is the eighth work in the Henscratch Studios Design 100 Project. The piece is informed by the monumental Big Button sculpture at Seventh Avenue and 39th Street in New York City’s Garment District, a public artwork built around the familiar forms of a button, needle, and thread. In The Little Button, those forms are reconsidered at an intimate, handmade scale. The project became an exercise in woodturning, with the button turned from walnut and the needle from maple. Copper wire was twisted into a three-ply thread, translating the sweeping thread of its New York inspiration into a material made by hand. The composition rests on a cherry base carved to suggest the scored concrete sidewalk beneath the city sculpture. Together, walnut, maple, cherry, and copper transform a familiar urban landmark into a small study of material, proportion, craft, and making.
