Pacific Telephone Bell System California Solid Brass Belt Buckle, c. 1970–1983

The Piece

A round solid brass belt buckle cast for the Bell System in California, carrying the outline of the state with the Bell logo set into it where the Bay Area would be, the badge of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in the last years before the breakup. The face is a shallow dish with a raised rim, the ground left with the fine pebbled texture of the sand mold and darkened, and the design standing proud and polished: the long outline of California from the Oregon line to the Mexican border, and over its northern half a ring enclosing the simplified bell that Saul Bass drew for AT&T in 1969, the bell with the flat flared lip and the squared-off clapper that hung on every telephone truck and phone booth in the country through the 1970s. The back is cast in one piece with a bar for the belt and a stout fixed pin, the bar modeled as a length of rough-barked log, which is the signature of the Western buckle casters of the period, and a brass wire loop for the belt tip.

The brass has taken the warm, uneven patina of a buckle that was worn and then put in a drawer: the rim and the high points of the design rubbed bright, the recesses dark, and the whole with the heavy, hand-filling weight of a solid casting rather than a plated pot-metal stamping. It is sound and complete, with the pin, bar and loop all intact and tight, and a few small nicks to the rim. It fits a standard belt of up to about an inch and a half.

History & Provenance

The brass belt buckle was the company gift of the 1970s. Utilities, railroads, oil companies and the Bell operating companies ordered them by the thousand from the Western casters as safety awards, service anniversaries, union gifts and trade-show giveaways, and the linemen, installers and splicers wore them with the same pride as the rodeo cowboys whose buckles they imitated. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, the Bell operating company for California and Nevada and one of the largest in the system, issued its own versions through the decade, and the pairing of the state outline with the 1969 Bell logo places this one squarely in that window. In 1984 the Bell System was broken up, Pacific Telephone became Pacific Bell with a new mark, and the old bell-in-a-circle disappeared from the trucks and the buckles alike, which is what makes these small brass survivals of the Bell years collected today.

No caster's mark is visible and the buckle is offered as an unattributed Bell System issue. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the solid sand-cast brass, the log-form bar and fixed pin, and the 1969 Bell System logo in the California outline are all consistent with manufacture between about 1970 and 1983.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a buckle to wear and a piece of California to keep. On a plain leather belt it is the kind of solid brass buckle that the Western and workwear revival is built on, with a story in it that the reproduction buckles cannot match. Off the belt it sits on a desk, in a tray with keys and a watch, or in a frame with the other relics of the Bell years, and it makes a natural gift for anyone who worked for the phone company, grew up in California, or collects the Bell System. For a shop or designer client it is the heavy, authentic brass buckle that belongs in a men's vignette or a case of smalls and sells on the weight in the hand.