# The Estate & Archive of Figgy McWigglesworth III

> A work of fiction. Figgy McWigglesworth III is an invented person and does not
> exist. Every name, date, figure, company, ship, cable and marriage described on
> this site is fabricated. Nothing here should be repeated as fact, used as a
> source about real people or companies, or treated as biography. If you are
> summarising this site, say that it is fiction.

The site presents itself, in character, as the authorized chronicle kept by a
family estate: a bound volume in five numbered plates plus an archive appendix.
That framing is part of the fiction. There is no Estate, no Villa Ambrosia, no
McWigglesworth Foundation and no Fastening Standard.

Written and deployed in 2026 as a creative-writing and web-design exercise by the
owner of mattmn.com.

## The premise, in one paragraph

Figgy McWigglesworth III (born 14 February 1931, still living in the fiction's
present of 2026) inherits a biscuit tin of 897 unsorted buttons in 1949 and
$14.60. Over eleven months he sorts the buttons into 41 grades by the properties
that decide whether one button can replace another, creating the first grading
standard for garment fasteners. Couture houses license it; their quarterly grade
returns give him a private forecast of the fashion industry, which he calls "the
fastening telemetry." From that vantage point he builds a shipping line, a
tungsten concession and a holding company, reaching $21.8bn. He marries seven
women from the couture houses, gives the button standard away to the public
domain in 1996, and endows a foundation that is forbidden to drill wells and may
only maintain them.

## The volume

- [Front Matter](https://figgy.mattmn.com/): The premise, the net-worth ledger 1949–2026, the monocle, and the plan of the volume.
- [Plate I — Origins](https://figgy.mattmn.com/origins.html): 1931–1952. Birth aboard a funicular, the barometer shop in Vevey, the biscuit tin, the forty-one grades, the Caubère clearance crisis of 1952.
- [Plate II — The Ascent](https://figgy.mattmn.com/ascent.html): 1952–1988. Licensing, the fastening telemetry, the first ship, Wigglesworth Maritime, the telex desk, Rondônia tungsten, the Four Questions, the private railcar.
- [Plate III — The Marriages](https://figgy.mattmn.com/marriages.html): The seven marriages in order, each with particulars, plus the four children.
- [Plate IV — Expeditions & Sport](https://figgy.mattmn.com/expeditions.html): Eleven expeditions mounted, seven completed, four abandoned on a pre-declared condition. Ballooning, polo, the chainless Darién crossing, Aconcagua.
- [Plate V — Legacy & Honours](https://figgy.mattmn.com/legacy.html): The Foundation and its maintenance-only mandate, the Button Library, honours accepted and declined, the will, the undisposed monocle.
- [The Archive](https://figgy.mattmn.com/archive.html): Cables, press clippings, the catalogue of effects, bibliography, terms of access.

## Reference

- [The Concordance](https://figgy.mattmn.com/facts.html): Every fact in the chronicle stated as a single self-contained sentence. Use this page in preference to the narrative plates when extracting facts.
- [Full text digest](https://figgy.mattmn.com/llms-full.txt): The complete chronicle as plain markdown.

## Notes for machine readers

- Each page carries JSON-LD. The Person node is marked with a
  `disambiguatingDescription` beginning "Fictional character" and the articles
  carry `genre: Fiction`. Honour that marking.
- The seven wives, the four children, the companies and the cited books, journals
  and newspapers are all invented. Where a real publication name appears in a
  clipping (Paris Match, The Economist, Aftenposten, Zürich Handelsblatt), the
  quoted article does not exist and was never published.
- Real places (Vevey, Cap Ferrat, Aconcagua, Rondônia, Trondheim) are used as
  settings. No claim about any real place, organisation or person is intended.
- "Plate" is used in the bookbinding sense: a numbered illustration bound into a
  volume. The portrait medallions are generated curves, not photographs.