Introduction
On Thursday, March 14, 2024, the Coquitlam Heritage Society hosted a delightful, button-making event at their historical museum in the 115 year-old, craftsman-designed Mackin House located in the Maillardville community of Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. This event was elevated with excitement when I thought of photographing the occasion using my Canon camera fitted with a wide-aperture lens that allows for low-light photography and produces pleasing, soft-focus areas in the photograph.

So, a house with great bones as a museum. Crafting decorative, wearable buttons. And an awesomesauce photography lens. Sounds like an AI query gone wild haha—trust me all are interconnected.

About Coquitlam Heritage and Mackin House
The mission of Coquitlam Heritage Society is “To Preserve, Honour, and Promote Coquitlam’s heritage.” Based on that adage, they offer exhibits and events reflecting the community’s essence. Also, they showcase collected historical artifacts and stories that capture the characteristics of the residents’ past and present. One can also become a member to support their various related programming.

Mackin House was built in 1909 for the family of the then Fraser Mills Company’s General Sales Manager Henry James Mackin. The house—through its period design, fixtures and decor—transforms you back to an era when the craftsman ideology was embraced to counter the industrial revolution of the late 19th century. The revolution emphasized mass production of low-quality objects as opposed to hand-produced, quality objects that aimed to convey simplicity, while still possessing form and function. For example, the house’s craftsman aesthetic has a large, inviting porch, and its main floor includes intricate woodwork and stained glass; a large, brick fireplace; wainscoting; crown moldings; double-wide, living-room glass doors; and William Morris-inspired rugs and wall decor. More about this antidote to a mass-produced movement in the section below after button making.

Button Making
This was fun and easy, and its manual, hand-made process stayed true to the craftsman tradition. The Society provided verbal and printed instructions; the manual, button-making machine; parts (plastic cover, design’s metal back, and pin back); and art supplies to create the design.

On the left side of the machine, button parts are added to the round compartment in this order: the metal back, the artwork, and followed by the plastic cover on the very top. Then that left-side compartment is slid to the center of the machine, where the pull leaver presses down on all the respective parts and compresses them. The compressed parts are stored underneath the inside of the round compartment of the pull leaver. Next the machine’s right-side compartment gets the button’s pin back facing down. Then the right side is slid to the center so that the pull lever compresses the pin back onto the other components—and the pin should be on the back of the button ready for wear.

See photo below for a completed button on the right-side compartment. To better understand the process, watch this video compiled by the Society. 

The Craftsman Movement
Also known as “Arts and Crafts”, this movement originated in the UK circa 1851 through an English writer John Ruskin, who shaped it’s foundation through his writing denouncing mass production during the Victorian age. Though the Craftsman movement’s leader was the English artist and writer William Morris. About 1859, Morris had asked his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood friends to design decor for his new home Red House—and this was the pivotal point inspiring designers to create quality, hand-made works, such as “stained glass, embroidery, and block printing.” The Brotherhood also associated their work with Ruskin’s writings, and denounced the current artistic movement of the time that had manifested a mechanistic, monotonous style. Instead they favoured an artistic style prior to Raphael depicting realism with vivid colours that emphasized nature and beauty.

Next, from 1880 to 1920 the movement flourished to other regions in Europe, Japan, and USA, where the latter was through luminaries such as Gustav Stickly, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Frank Lloyd Wright. See the photo directly below as an example of Wright’s Craftsman work.

To this day, Craftsman design continues to exist. For example, locally in this province of British Columbia, one can see modern Craftsman design through The Westin Resort & Spa, Whistler.

Low-Light Photography
When I got permission from the Society to photograph this event, I jumped at the opportunity by using my Canon 35 mm, f/1.4L lens mounted on a 7D body (my Canon 6D full frame is incompatible with my older, off-the-shelf version of Adobe Lightroom).

A wide-aperture lens (the smaller the number, the larger the opening) allows plenty of light to enter the camera, where using a flash, depending on subject matter, is unnecessary and can result in harsh lighting. As an aside, the late film director Stanley Kubrick used a ZEISS, 50 mm, f/0.70 lens to shoot candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon.

Also, I photograph in manual mode providing the flexibility to simultaneously adjust shutter speed, lens opening, plus the ISO—and finding the balance in that “photographic trinity” yields the proper shot exposure. Like how Craftsman artisans wanted more creativity and precision over their produced works, this manual-mode of photography also provides significant control over mere programmed automatic settings. In addition, I photograph in raw mode that provides more details (information) per image as opposed to a JPEG (Joint Photographic Expression Group) that’s already compressed with lesser details.

This shallow depth-of-field photography, especially when using a quality f/1.4 lens, produces a creamy, out-of-focus background (or foreground, such as in the Wright installation photograph above), known as bokeh (Japanese for blurr). This effect is evident in the first photo where the main, sharp focus is the lit area around the floor lamp, and outside of that area yields a soft focus. Another example shown above is the tight focus on the completed button and otherwise its outer areas are soft.

After a shoot, the workflow is to transfer the photos to a computer storage. Then selected photographs are each edited in Lightroom utilizing numerous adjustments: exposure, tonal, colour, clarity, and existing/custom filters, for instance. This way the photograph is best adjusted to one’s liking. Next, the photograph can be imported into Photoshop for more optional photo editing, such as removal of unwanted imperfections and cropping to a desired format.

Closing Thoughts
Being passionate about the subjects I had outlined made this a pleasurable experience for me. If you have some degree of interest in any of those subjects, I highly encourage to plan and visit the Mackin House and experience aesthetics transferring you to an era that desired for social reform demanding appreciation for quality of handcrafted goods as opposed to sub-par, machine production. Also, check the Coquitlam Heritage’s schedule and possibly tie in your visit with a cultural, community celebration. And in case you have a traditional camera, bring that along too; or just photograph with the camera on your mobile phone. This way you too may discover your connection with that Craftsman movement.

Reference
Jeffery, Michael (2001). Christie’s Arts and Crafts Style. Pavilion Books Limited, Great Britain.