Memorial Chamber of the Button Industry in Sochocin

Buttons were already produced in Sochocin in the nineteenth century. They were made from shells mainly gathered from the river Wkra. They were then sold in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, and even in St. Petersburg. The Memorial Chamber of the Button Industry stores memorabilia and in an interesting way disseminates knowledge related to this unique craft.

For more than ten decades, ranging from the 1870s, Sochocin was a thriving centre of the Button Industry. The Chamber was established with a bottom-up initiative of the residents. The idea that guided them was to save from oblivion a unique tradition, characteristic only of that place, and those people who for over a century created it. The effect of their actions was the opening in 2009, in the Municipal Cultural Center at ul. Guzikarzy, of an exhibition entitled “From the riches of nature. Sochocin’s buttons “. Thanks to it, a craft extinct a few decades earlier has again become present in the consciousness of new generations, and the memory of it is constantly nurtured.

The exhibition consists of two parts: the first, consisting of charts and photographs, presents the history of Sochocin, and the other is arranged like a house interior, in which the process of producing hand-crafted buttons was reconstructed. The collections, which can be seen in the Memorial Chamber of the Button Industry, is located in the centre of the village, in the building of the Municipal Cultural Centre, and were collected thanks to the involvement of the residents of the village, whose families were engaged in button making often for several generations. The collection includes buttons, machines and tools used for their cutting, turning, and punching. It is complemented by numerous memorabilia and photographs from family archives.

In the facility, there are also collected copies of documents related to the history of Sochocin, including a copy of the charter of incorporation and the document revoking its municipal rights. In the framework of the fourth edition of the competition of Mazowieckie Museum Events “Willow”, the exhibition was awarded first place in the category “The most interesting exhibition organized by a museum in the Mazowieckie region.” In 2011, at the request of the Municipal Cultural Centre a documentary was created entitled “Sochocińskie buttons – traces of the old tradition”. The movie can be obtained from the Sochocin Municipal Cultural Centre /GOK/ on DVD. It is also available on the Internet.

The institution conducts museum lessons for schools. You can visit the exhibition with a guide. The facility has also prepared an exhibition stand, which is presented in many places in the country.