In today's post we will explore the history of antique Windsor style eyeglasses, the iconic fully vintage round glasses worn by many famous people such as Mahatma Gandhi, Ernest Hemingway, and John Lennon.
Windsor glasses date back to the late 1800's. Originally invented in the city of Windsor in England. Nose pieces as we know them today hadn't been invented yet at the time, instead vintage eyeglasses used what is called a saddle bridge which sits directly on the nose. This caused the frames to be smaller and narrower as they were worn closer to the face and did not protrude as they do today due to the nose pads. The lenses were therefore smaller, 36mm-42mm was common at the time. (As opposed to today's eyeglass frames sizes of 47-60.)
Another common characteristic of vintage Windsor glasses is the cable temples. As opposed to today's skull temples Windsor eyeglass frames had cable temples which wrap all the way around the ears and are longer than today's temples. This partially has to do with the fact that people at the time rode horses before the car was invented and did not want their vintage eyeglasses to fall off of their face while riding. The cable temples secure them to the face.
Windsor eyeglass frames were generally gold or silver colored, often coated with tortoise plastic (Zylo). In fact, their development is closely tied to tortoiseshell vintage eyeglasses. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, antique tortoiseshell eyeglasses presented many challenges due to the frame being sensitive and easy to break. At some point someone realized that you could have metal eyeglass frames with a tortoise coating. These vintage frames would closely mimic tortoiseshell eyeglasses but at the same time not have the issue with the frames easily breaking since the body was metal. This also enables the eyewires to have screws to open them to change the prescription lenses, which further prevented the antique eyeglasses from breaking while the lenses were being put in.
Windsor frames were later manufactured by American Optical which called them Wellsworth, as well as Shuron, Artcraft and many other US companies. They were worn by a list of popular people including John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi.