Immo and HildegardStory Button
Stamped and Pierced
Tinted Brass
Shiny Metal Liner
NBS Medium, 1 3/16"
c1890s
Immo and Hildegard - Japanned Back
~ Immo and Hildegard ~ from Gustav Freytag's The Wren's Nest
Printed in the book
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham, 1810-1897
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama.
A Revised American Edition
of the Readers' Handbook Volume II (1892)
Immo and HildegardArtist - H. Kaulbach
Printed in the book
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham, 1810-1897
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama.
A revised American Edition
of the Readers' Handbook Volume II (1892)
There is a beautiful story to go with this button. The button is known as Immo and Hildegard, or, the Lover's Meeting. It is a stamped and pierced brass button, mounted over a shiny metal liner, with a japanned back. At 1 3/16", it is 1/16" shy of being an NBS Large. The streaks in the silver liner are an artifact of the photograph, and do not appear on the actual button. If you click on the image above, you can read about Immo and Hildegard. The full text is available from the The University of Wisconsin's Digital Collections, as printed in Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, circa 1892. The entry starts on Page 204 and continues on Page 205, with the print and a frontispiece sandwiched between them.
Freytag's story of Immo and Hildegard, and H. Kaulbach's image are in the public domain. I wonder if H. Kaulbach had anything to do with the design of this button, since it is clearly patterned after the woodcut illustrating Freytag's story. I also haven't been able to determine how long a work the original volume, The Wren's Nest, might be, because what is printed in Character Sketches is flowery and romantic, but brief. Freytag, a controversial German novelist and playwright, lived from 1816-1895. Kaulbach is probably Hermann Kaulbauch (1846-1909), a German artist best known for his portraits of children.
Image and Text © 2009 Anne AKA Once Upon A Button
