Pearls - Pearls of the Midwest

Pearl Button Capital of the World
For much of the 1800s, people harvested pearl mussels largely for animal feed and sometimes for freshwater pearls. Then in 1887, German button-maker John Frederick Boepple arrived in the United States and settled in the Mississippi River town of Muscatine, Iowa.

Here he opened a mother-of-pearl button factory, supplied by an abundance of thick-shelled American pearl mussels from nearby rivers and streams. By 1900, this small Iowa town had earned the right to call itself the “Pearl Button Capital of the World,” out-producing the more established button-making centers in Europe.

The Button-making Process: The first step in producing a mother-of-pearl button was to cut a round plug, or “blank,” from the mussel shell itself. Blanks were classified by thickness and tumbled in a drum to smooth the rough edges.

Next, these blanks were ground down to uniform thickness in a machine that also removed the shell’s brown outer surface. And finally, these blanks were drilled with holes and polished to a pearly sheen.

continue to John Boepple’s Story

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