Our Story

Our story began in 1985 when Susan Davis found a stash of gorgeous buttons in her 95-year-old grandmother’s button tins. Envisioning them as earrings, she left with every button in the house and was soon selling jewelry at craft and antique shows across the South.

 Susan’s husband Donny joined her as business manager in 1988, and together they grew both a family and a company in the small, historic town of St. Francisville, Louisiana. Their daughter Anna was born that same year, followed by her brother Ben in 1992.  What began with a few pairs of earrings grew into sales to hundreds of stores around the world, from the Smithsonian to the Palace of Versailles. In 1994 the company moved into St. Francisville’s historic 1905 bank building, home to our flagship store and button museum, which many remember fondly. A second location followed on Magazine Street in New Orleans in 2015. Through it all, our motto was to honor the button, always incorporating actual buttons from the 1860s onward into our designs.

 Anna, three years younger than the company and fond of calling it her older sibling, grew up as its “show baby,” traveling to arts fairs and trade shows with her parents. After studying Fine Arts at Tulane and building a career in photography, she joined the company in 2013 and eventually became Brand Manager.

 In 2023, Susan and Donny retired and closed Grandmother’s Buttons, selling the bank building but, luckily, not the massive collection of buttons and jewelry findings. Then, after her young daughter Lillian started school, Anna felt the pull of buttons once more.

A New Chapter

 Today, Grandmother’s Buttons is beginning a new chapter, this time written by Anna. After years shaping the brand behind the scenes, she began designing the pieces herself in 2026. Like her mother, she searches the world for rare 19th-century buttons and early 20th-century vintage glass. Her designs, both production collections and one-of-a-kind treasures, are sold exclusively here on our website.

Anna is thrilled to be reviving such a beloved brand and knows that she is taking the passions of three generations of women with her on the journey: her great-grandmother Bettie whose penchant for saving and recycling provided the first buttons; her grandmother Miriam whose beauty and creativity inspired Susan; and her mother Susan whose love of discovering and making treasures drove the business. Perhaps she is also envisioning the role Lillian might play as time goes on.