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The Button King’s Legacy Lives on in Quirky South Carolina Museum
Dalton Stevens created button-covered folk art starting in 1983, gaining national fame and inspiring a museum that still attracts visitors nearly a decade after his 2016 death.
- On Tuesday, Dalton Stevens' button-covered hearse is on display at the S.C. Button Museum, a shed on Stevens' land in Bishopville, S.C., which has been open 24/7 since its start.
- In 1983, Dalton Stevens started sewing buttons while battling insomnia and post-retirement withdrawal, inspired when `television went off at two in the morning back then`.
- He gained national exposure on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, appearing in a suit of 16,333 buttons and playing a 3,005-button guitar, while his button-covered Chevette attracted CNN and magazine coverage.
- After Stevens' 2016 death, his son J.D. Stevens kept the S.C. Button Museum open, flips on the shed lights to feel his father's presence, and the guestbook shows about a dozen visitors.
- The Stevens family maintains the museum, decorating walls with added buttons and preserving the board with nails used to hang 25 buttons, while the second casket remains missing.
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Associated Press News+39 Reposted by 39 other sources
The Button King's legacy lives on in quirky South Carolina museum
J.D. Stevens feels his late father's presence when he enters a shed near his South Carolina home. It's the home of the Button Museum, filled with creations by Dalton Stevens, known as the Button King.
·United States
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Total News Sources40
Leaning Left14Leaning Right2Center17Last UpdatedBias Distribution52% Center
Bias Distribution
- 52% of the sources are Center
52% Center
L 42%
C 52%
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