About 3,500 years ago, shell had been widely used as money by the American Indians, Chinese, Indians, the Pacific Islanders and African. As shell carry the prefix of shell.
AS the second largest living species, about 110,000 different kinds of shells can be found on earth which can be divided into seven categories. The most common type is the Gastropoda which has over 90,000 kinds (such as the trocas and abalone). Its shell is usually spirally coiled which is consisted of the head, internal organs and feet. Another popular type is the Bivalvia which has about 20,000 kinds, such as akoya, MOP and river shell. Some of these shells are pearly in appearance. Composed of two valves, the animal lacks a true head and radula, and feeds by trapping organic particles as it passes over its gills. It can be used for food and medicine.
The smallest shell is only 2 millimetres in diameter while the largest one can be 2 meters in diameter, weighing 2,500 kgs. Some of its life-span is as short as 2 months while some can live up to 10 or even 100 years long.
Though shells had been used in the button industry for the past three centuries, plastic button however replaced shell button in recent decades. As the environmental concerns are getting higher on the world’s agenda than ever before, the use of shell is getting renewed. The demand for shell increases day by day as people begin to accept the idea of recycling, making use of the available resources on earth.
Many famous brand designers have chosen different kinds of shell buttons in their collections, including GAP, Banana Republic, Ellen Tracy, DKNY, Polo Ralph Lauren, Benetton, Escada and etc.
Only certain kinds of shell can be used for the manufacturing of buttons, like trocas, mother- of-pearl, abalone, akoya pearl shell, tiger shell, river shell and etc., all of which come from the Indo-Pacific Islands. Button made from the material of white MOP is with the highest quality and the most expensive one among all other shells. Akoya and river shell buttons are considered to be the least expensive ones.
In the past, fishermen in the Indo-Pacific Islands sold all the collected shells to the can factories which only extracted the shell meat, or the cultured pearl farmers took out the peals from the shells, thus leaving tons of empty shells as headaches to those countries. Fortunately, a way of using these empty shells has been found. By using the state-of-the-art machinery, the diamond-coated drilling machines cut disks from the shell manually,and the diamond-coated grinding machines flatten the uneven surfaces of these shell disks. Special shaping machines work on the disk surfaces and turn them into different shapes, and the drilling machines punch 2 or 4 holes on these disks, thus producing millions and millions of shell buttons. Because of the intricate shapes of the shells, only about 10% of their weight can be converted into shell buttons.
This company only uses those left-over, empty, non-protected and artificially-cultured shells as our raw materials. Therefore, when you use our shell buttons, you have already made your contributions to the protection of the environment. We hereby sincerely express our thankfulness to your support.
