During these challenging times when COVID-19 has overwhelmed the world, many businesses have ceased to function or are operating at limited capacity. Here at The Vintage Optical Shop we are able to operate relatively normal while taking all the necessary precautions.
We recently listed some interesting vintage frames as you will see below. Many of the are cat eye glasses from the 1950s and 1960's, but we have listed many older frames such as pince nez and other vintage glasses which will be displayed below.
Starting off with this unique red colored pair of cat eye glasses. They were made by Shuron in the 1950's or 1960s. The color is pretty unique as we don't see many frames in red. This pair of vintage glasses also has an interesting feature which the manufacturer was seemingly trying out, which is an adjustable bridge size. There are screws on the inside of the brows which control a sliding mechanism where the lenses move inward or outward depending on what felt most comfortable for the one wearing them. This "invention" by Shuron seemingly never took off for whatever reason, otherwise it would likely be common with Shuron glasses, other 1950's glasses or even with modern eyeglasses.
Next is a pair of Tura cat eye glasses from the 1960's. We've written a lot about Vintage Tura Glasses here and these frames seem to be pretty standard for Tura cat eye glasses, with one exception: They have sort of a flower imprinted on them. While Tura often used flowers in designing their vintage eyglasses, they were generally carved of metal or engraved. This seems more like a photo of sorts which was uncommon with vintage eyewear or eyewear in general, even today.
Next up we have some solid gold rimless saddle bridge eyeglasses from a much earlier era. These antique eyeglasses are from the late 1880's or the early 1900's. For a long period of time antique spectacles had a saddle bridge, where the frames sit directly on the nose. Later on in the 1920's glasses started appearing with nose pads as we know them today. These had certain advantages and we have written about that extensively elsewhere.
These frames are solid 10k gold. Many antique eyeglasses were were gold filled. These are solid gold and marked as such with a hallmark bearing a circle with a line going through the center.
That's it for today. Hopefully well post some more later this week.