Boutons De Venerie

Hermes Historias De Carres > Autumn-Winter 2010

Pinned down like butterflies, these hunting buttons make up a harmoniously coloured picture like little planets carefully laid out and classified. In France, from the eighteenth century, under the reign of Louis XV, the outfit for hunting with hounds lent itself to uniforms, where the number of buttons was defined and whose aspect was meticulously prescribed. At the beginning of the following century the animal being hunted was often represented on these metal ornaments, but it is since the end of the French Revolution that these objects became emblematic, to the point where the members of a hunt were called “buttons”. This is why such a composition evokes, in so little space, so many “hunts”.