Now On View: Button Mold

This mold is one of the earliest tools to have made the letters “USA” a symbol of the newly independent United States. Beginning in 1777, Continental Army soldiers started wearing pewter buttons cast in molds such as this one. Examples of those buttons found at the site of the Valley Forge encampment are also on display.

The mold is now on view in the gallery Winter Patriots: 1777-1778.