This article may not be reproduced in any form, print or digital, without express written permission from the author, Sylvia Liszka Durell. Copyright 2026.
by Sylvia Liszka Durell, 2026
The Button King Museum of Bishopville, South Carolina, recently became a WBA Affiliate organization.
As a button collector, Dalton Stevens’ museum had been on my list of places to visit for quite a while. A few years ago, I finally took a detour on my route from Florida to Ohio to visit.
Dalton is gone now, but his son J. D. Stevens met us at the door of the Museum. The building is located near the family home. J D doesn’t stand on formality: he readily invited us and our dog into the Museum, along with his own dog.
As soon as you enter, you come face-to-face with a mannequin dressed in Dalton’s original work of button art: a denim jumpsuit. Insomnia and the fact that television went off at 2 a.m. back in 1983, got him started on adorning the jumpsuit with buttons. It took him almost three years to finish it, and when he was done he had covered it with 16,333 buttons. Buttons were everywhere on the jumpsuit except the butt and the back of the thighs.
Dalton wore the jumpsuit as a guest on the Johnny Carson Show but not before he had glued 517 buttons on his shoes and 3,005 on his guitar. Next, he covered a banjo, a piano, and his wife’s 1983 Chevy Chevette (150,000 buttons). Dalton’s insomnia became an asset. “I wouldn’t quit. I wouldn’t stop,” he said. “I’d go four and five days and never go to bed.”
Dalton regarded his original button suit as his masterpiece, but his hearse is a show stopper. Designed areas incorporating 600,000 buttons decorate the large vehicle. A funeral home in town gifted Dalton with two caskets. Dalton damaged the first when he accidentally locked himself in it one night, trying to take a nap. Luckily, J.D. came by the next morning and freed his father! But he did do some prior damage trying to escape. He was buried in the second coffin which was placed in his button-decorated hearse for the ride to the cemetery.
Many of the buttons Dalton used on his projects were donated. There is no fee to visit the Button King Museum, but donations are welcomed. To see a video of my visit to the Museum, go to https://youtu.be/ka-Fmn513vc?is=AI4P8S__RoMj0LI8
This article may not be reproduced in any form, print or digital, without express written permission from the author, Sylvia Liszka Durell. Copyright 2026
