Dane,
I do not think the buttons you are thinking of are milk glass; more
likely they are pressed porcelain. See Rick's Sprague's recent HA
article on the Prosser process of manufacturing buttons; Grace
Ziesing wrote quite a bit about the pressed porcelain buttons in
Volume II of our series of reports on the Boott Boardinghouses in
Lowell (personal effects section) and in her MA thesis. There's also
a nice publication on buttons by Steven Hinks (???) in Stan South's
series Contributions to Historical Archaeology, I think.
M.
--
Mary C Beaudry, PhD, RPA
Associate Professor
Acting Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Archaeology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215 USA
tel. 617-358-1650
fax 617-353-6800