A Vision Quest

An image of Secundus the Silent wearing the earliest form of eyeglasses, rivet spectacles, two magnifying glasses on the ends of metal handles riveted together. / Michel Wolgemut (workshop of), 1493.

“Portrait of Benedictus van Haeften” by Cornelis Martinus Vermeulen, (1654-1709). The scholar Van Haeften holding glasses that point to sight as a crucial component of his work.

With his glasses featured so prominently, this portrait of Nino de Guevara is meant to convey his power as a cardinal and Spanish inquisitor general. /El Greco, circa 1600.

“Portrait of an Artist Sketching a Portrait Miniature” by Franz Jacob Josef Ignatz von Predl (1799) depicts the visually demanding profession of a miniaturist painter with finely drawn bow spectacles, reflecting the delicacy of metal frames by the end of the 18th century.

This mid-18th-century lorgnette fan, with a tiny prospect-glass lens in its handle, is similar to the diamond-studded one Queen Marie Antoinette received as a gift in 1782.

A spy or opera glass by Josiah Wedgwood from the late 18th century. The jasperware was meant to imitate ancient Roman cameo glass.

Spyglass lenses screw onto either end of this vanity case, circa 1760-1800, which also holds grooming tools.

This caricature shows the earl of Derby with his then mistress (and leading actress of the day), Elizabeth Warren, holding a fashionable spy glass to inspect pictures at James Christie’s. “A Peep at Christie’s; -or-Tally-ho & His Nimeny-pimeney taking the Morning Lounge”by James Gillray, September 24, 1796.

This miniature portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1792) by Thomas Peat illustrates the use of upturned temples, as opposed to spiral or ring temples. It is based on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s self-portrait of 1788, one year before he lost sight in his left eye.

President Theodore Roosevelt’s close association with the pince-nez meant that this pair of glasses could escape its associations with the introverted scholars of the nineteenth century./ Photograph by Eugene Ashton Perry, 1901.

In this photograph of Lillian Russell by J. Schloss, circa 1898, her monocle is worn more as jewelry and an expression of luxury and femininity than useful object.

MY LITTLE BIRD recently spoke with Jessica Glasscock, author of Making a Spectacle: A Fashionable History of Glasses, (Black Dog and Leventhal, 2021) about the evolution of eyewear, from useful tool of medieval monks to 21^st century must-have accessory.

MLB: You mention that the first eyeglasses started with a jewel—a clear beryl crystal, made for use by anyone whose career involved having to read and write. Were early glasses more like magnifying glasses?

JG: The first eyeglasses were essentially readers—either a single eyeglass or a pair riveted together that was handheld.  You don’t see concave lenses—for nearsightedness—until the 15^th century.

Author Jessica Glasscock is a lecturer in fashion history at Parsons School of Design and worked as a researcher at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for more than a decade. / Photo by Nicholas Needham.

MLB: You say men were the earliest, most frequent users of glasses. What about women?

JG: Although mass-produced readers became available in the early 17^th century, there’s not a lot of documentation of women wearing glasses, although women who were involved in textile production and doing fine lacework would have needed spectacles as much as men did for accounting.

MLB: Talk a little about those beautiful spyglasses/jealousy glasses that the likes of Madame Pompadour and Marie Antoinette wore.

JG: The spy glass (a single glass over one eye) and the miniature lorgnette, based on the technology of the telescope and adorned with intricate carvings and pastoral scenes, were the first eyeglasses as fashionable accessory for women. That they looked like jewelry was a big part of the appeal. A variation of the mini lorgnette, a jealousy glass, had one lens for seeing the ballet or theater stage, plus a magnified mirror positioned at an angle to observe what was going on behind the user.

MLB: Who sold eyeglasses?

JG: The earliest distributors were peddlers who carried around baskets of lenses with various strengths. You’d try them on until you got the right one. From the 18^th century on, optometry was developing as a field and everything was getting lighter and more precise, while jewelers were making glasses beautiful. Cartier started making glasses at the end of the 19^th century. When the question came up of who was going to sell eyeglasses—optometrists won the day. You couldn’t sell glasses until you had an optometrist on site.

MLB: This sentence from a 1920s WWD article was kind of shocking: “Eyeglasses are one of those things . . . that require infinitely greater skill to persuade people to buy than something like a new dress or new suit. Particularly is this so with women, many of whom, believing glasses disfiguring, would sooner hire a guide than wear ‘spectacles.”

JG:  Glasses for women were associated with aging, while good vision was the mark of health, which influenced many women to resist wearing glasses. Moreover, the 1920s was a youth quake—the era of the flapper—when nobody wanted to look old.

MLB: When did fashion crack the code on glasses; what precipitated that change?

JG:First came the emergence of sunglasses as a fashion item, spurred on by technical innovation—Edwin Land’s 1932 perfection of light-filtering plastic sheet known as Polaroid), which sunglass manufacturers used to make high-performance eyewear for the sports market—for flying planes, driving race cars, skiing. The fact that sunglasses became popular for Hollywood stars—it was a practical solution to the weather—led to their growth and distribution in the 1930s. They become fashionable because people wanted them. What cemented eyeglasses into the fashion firmament was the cat eye or Harlequin frame. In the 1930s, a window dresser named Altina Schinasi thought a display of optical frames was very unappealing and decided to take her idea for a feminine, cheekbone-uplifting Harlequin frame to Lugene, a high-end  optical store  By 1940, her frames had broken women’s resistance to optical frames and in the 1950s, Harlequin frames defined 1950s fashion eyewear. They were optically correct and covered by insurance to boot.

MLB: Can you explain what you mean when you refer to the “tension between luxury and accessibility that is all over the history of eyewear?”

JG: Eyewear is a special category of accessory because if you need vision correction, you have to wear glasses. There’s an uneasy alliance between people who design fashion eyewear and optometrists. In the 1970s British designer Mary Quant designed a line of  oversize glasses, which dominated high-fashion glasses at the time. Because of the extreme scale, though, some prescriptions couldn’t be filled properly. Quant had to design a second line, with more input from optometrists and less fashion over function. Today you mostly see these big frames as sunglasses, which don’t always require prescriptions.

MLB: What’s your take on Warby Parker frames?

JG: The founder of Warby Parker couldn’t believe how much he was paying for a piece of plastic. The company found a new solution, starting with frames with mid-century silhouettes that were becoming popular at the time. They were optometrically correct without a lot of drama.

MLB: Looking into your magic ball, what’s your vision of the future of eyewear?

JG: We’ve been working toward a place where everything exists at the same time: wire frames, round lenses, aviators, cat eyes. Innovation will come in the form of materials, which are becoming lighter and cheaper. What I see happening now is character eyewear. When you want to connect with a certain persona, say Gloria Steinem or Amelia Earhart, you reach for aviators. Feeling retro or eccentric, how about a cat eye? Big-time fashion editor, oversize sunglasses.

MLB: Finally, what inspired you to write a book about the history of eyeglasses?

JG: My editor asked me if I wanted to write this book—I had written about accessories before. Plus, I was interested in how something you need became something you want, how women aged in fashion and why they weren’t wearing glasses for so long.

MLB: In your book’s dedication, you apologize to your mother for the many times you lost your glasses in the second grade. You also said you thought you might have been angling for more pairs. Do you have several now—what are your favorites?

JG: I don’t have a big collection—a mirrored pair, a French pair, an Italian pair. Diana Vreeland would approve. I love luxury eyewear from Gucci, Chloe and Prada, but I’m also a big vintage shopper, so my choices are intentionally limited. Finding a frame that flatters you (if you can find someone who’s an expert who can advise you, that’s the holy grail) is the hardest part of shopping for eyeglasses.