Very Vintage, yet Futuristic Celluloid Sunglasses
As a collector, sometimes if something was cool I’d pick up more than one. Such was the case with these French celluloid sunglasses from the 1930s. Both frame front and lens are one piece...
Author: Moss Lipow
The lost American art of Stamped, 12k Gold Filled Eyeglass Frames
The art of gold filled eyeglass frames, stamped with intricate designs, usually in the Art Deco style, flourished during the interwar period. The process was not simple. It was an apex of achievement in...
To see or to breathe? The dilemma of eyewear at the front. WWI Part 2
In our PREVIOUS POST we covered WWI gas masks. They posed a dilemma for soldiers wearing eyeglasses. The first gas masks were essentially flannel bags with mica lenses. The fit over glasses was often...
July 28th 1914. The Eyewear of WWI, Part 1.
100 years is not as long as it might seem. It was only a couple years ago the last veteran of the The Great War passed away. He was Claude Choules (3 March 1901...
Benjamin Franklin Bifocals, suitable for Scrooge or Santa.
A fellow asked me recently about the first appearance of octagonal eyeglasses. He had thought they were an aesthetic mutation of the 1920s which flourished and declined before WWII. This is not so. Octagonal...
Golf Glasses… Seriously.
Derek C. Davidson was a collector who wrote “Spectacles, Lorgnettes and Monocles”. From his author’s bio: “The late Derek Davidson trained as an optician. He started his own business and a workshop for custom-made...
Why are Vintage Sunglasses cooler than today’s sunglasses?
My own personal opinion is fashion eyewear flourished from the 1950s through 1970s. Lower end sunglasses like Foster Grant, Samco, Polaroid in Europe, Polaroid Cool Ray in the United States, and others produced bold,...
Vintage Red White and Blue Sunglasses by Eyewear’s Best Unknown Designer
I guess everybody in the U.S. begins their July 4th holiday tomorrow. Nowadays people in the United States eat barbecue, detonate small explosives and watch professionals detonate larger explosives by way of celebration. Things...
1960s Op-Art Sunglasses
Fashion cycles went quickly and differed radically from year to year during the 1960s. I’ll admit I have a fondness for much of the design of the era. I still marvel at pictures of...
The History of Aviator Sunglasses, Part 7 – The Air Force HGU-4/P
The familiar WWII era AN6531 Comfort Cable aviator sunglasses were still issued in relatively unchanged form long after V-J day. With darker lenses than the 1941 originals they would become known as Type G-2...
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