|
In the early twentieth century the choice was between spectacles or pince-nez (or for certain social classes, a monocle). Spectacle wearing continued to become more widespread, key developments being the supply of glasses to troops in the First World War and to all and sundry under the National Health Scheme from 1948. American and then European frames and lenses extended their influence on the market and by century's end the British spectacle-making industry was all but dead with the exception of bespoke fashion frames for the higher end of the market.
The twentieth century was when spectacles became items of fashion wear, but in Britain at least, even that development was slow in coming. It had been recognised for centuries that wearing spectacles has major cosmetic implications. Spectacles cover approximately one third of the face and rest on the major facial features (nose, ears, cheeks), whilst partly concealing the remaining main feature - the eyes. Spectacles, because they were noticeable, were either a boon to the exhibitionist or a burden to the shy and insecure. With the post-war growth in ‘styled’ spectacles exemplified by the nylon supra, patients became more willing to accept what was, for them, the bad news from their optometrist that they needed glasses (as opposed to the good news that their defective vision could be corrected). As a result they were more willing to seek out and accept the advice of the sight-testing optician or refractionist. In short, fashionable frames were good for their vision!
Even in the late twentieth century a good optometrist had to be aware of the psychological factors at play when dealing with patients who had not previously worn corrective eyewear. To them the end product was not the prescription but the spectacles that they emerged into the street wearing, an event which, increasingly, could take place within the hour.
In Continental Europe they were perhaps quicker than Great Britain in adopting the new concept of spectacles as fashion items. In his historical survey of spectacles (a thinly disguised promotion of the Italian optical manufacturing sector written in 1956) De Lotto could write: ‘Since the imagination and genius of the manufacturers take pleasure in launching new types of frames by both making the most of new discoveries in the field of plastic materials, which is still a very resourceful one, and by making always more attractive and smart the glasses on the faces of people who have to wear them, it is useless for us to stop and make a list of all the most important types used today because in a very short time they will certainly be out of fashion’.
For this same reason the MusEYEum makes this webpage more of a discussion than an outline of twentieth century spectacles. To see more examples of actual styles we recommend browsing our online catalogue or making an appointment to come in and view our twentieth century trade literature and advertisements.
In his lecture notes held by the BOA Museum, the distinguished university lecturer Paul Fairbanks rejected the label of ‘cosmetic styling’ common in the 1950s and 1960s, and instead preferred the term ‘architecture of dispensing’ because the process could combine function with appearance. Fairbanks saw no philosophical distinction therefore between the designers of spectacles in British workshops and the builders of the Parthenon in Ancient Athens! In 1952 the Information Council of the Optical Industry (ICOI) began to encourage an interest in and a demand for eyewear which was not just optically correct but ‘in harmony’ with face, dress and environment.
The problem in Great Britain, as opposed perhaps to the United States or Continental Europe, was that the public was not tremendously fashion-driven when it came to eyewear. In the 1950s designers like Michael Birch found that there was still a significant market for custom-made frames with their emphasis on traditional quality, rather than the mass-produced styles popular in Italy and France. More worrying was the fact that stylistic variations in a frame were lost upon the common man who lacked an appropriate visual memory. It was not unusual for a frame to be collected (normally up to a week after it was ordered) and for the customer to fail to recognise it, indeed to start denying that it was the model chosen. One writer noted that so-called fancy eyewear remained ‘only the sugar coating to the otherwise bitter pill’ and that there were even some patients, hitherto reluctant to wear spectacles, whom the optician could know would concede to purchase a pair of spectacles, apparently swayed by the argument that they were now fashionable, yet who would not actually wear them once they got them home.
Even if it was not at first universally accepted, the claim that a person can actually look good in glasses is now quite an historic one stretching back over half a century and it would be a mistake to think of it as recent. Witness the claim of Bausch & Lomb launching its new ladies’ frame for the Summer of 1950, ‘Cordelle Balgrip’, as a frame that ‘introduces a new accessory to beauty - a dainty feminine mounting for every dress-up occasion - as appealing as finely engraved costume jewellery’. Not unreasonably the industry was targeting the upper end of the market in these early days, likening its corrective eyewear product to an intricate luxury item. In the 1960s Everywoman magazine could cite Oliver Goldsmith alongside the celebrity hairdresser Xavier and the make-up artist Eve Gardiner as one of the country’s three top ‘beauty makers’ but there were some crucial distinctions between their respective specialisms; clothes fashion generally changed twice a year whereas spectacles moved more slowly, not least because it was not deemed to be in the manufacturers’ interest! Many frame styles remained popular even when the supposed fashion had moved on, for example the 1950s browbar style or even the early 1960s ‘bold’ look though this was no longer confined to male wearers. In the sixties it was claimed that most spectacle wearers were aged over forty whereas the fashion industry aimed at the twenty-somethings.
By the late 1980s we might say that the fashion industry clearly aimed at a still younger age group (including products targeted specifically at children, not just their parents) as well as an older one, but anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that many older patients, particularly presbyopes coming to eyewear for the first time, still preferred supposedly non-fashionable styles - for example larger eye sizes because they provided a wider field of vision.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
The characteristics of frames must meet specific technical demands in spite of the dictates of fashion or personal taste. A spectacle frame must hold the lenses in a position most convenient for the eyes and must not cause trouble, whether that is in the form of pressure, pain or indents left behind in the flesh. Nose pads were therefore developed to increase the surface area of a pressure point and the remarkably malleable W-bridge remained popular until well past the mid century.
The profession of dispensing was already well developed but we might say that it was becoming more intellectualised in the third quarter of the twentieth century spurred on by Lewis Sasieni’s seminal book on the Principles and Practice of Optical Dispensing (1962) which did much to encourage practitioners to see the supply of a frame as only the first step. It had to be properly fitted so as to hold the lenses in the correct position in front of the eyes at a correct height, distance apart and distance from the eye and with the right amount of inclination. It had to fit comfortably and securely in terms of the nasal contour, the weight and the angling of the joints. A patient’s potential allergy to some material was to be taken into account. This could only be achieved by full and accurate facial measurement. The appearance of the frame was by contrast merely a ‘matter of taste to be dealt with later’ (Paul Fairbanks Archive).
Material Breakthroughs
In 1999 the exhibition guide for the largest British optical trade fair declared that ‘titanium, laminated plastics and precious metals are among the eyewear trends for Optrafair 99’. In other words, the most popular frame materials included modern, relatively less modern and long-established examples. It is possible to derive from this the not too radical conclusion that material fashions come and go, sometimes recur and rarely disappear altogether. This is significant since the material from which a frame is fabricated can have immense effects on its appearance, noticeability, weight, comfort, strength and durability as well as influencing to a slightly lesser degree these days the unit price. In the 1970s there was no doubt in commentators’ minds that wire frames were ‘hip’. In 1971 an estimated 75% of persons in Los Angeles and New York were wearing them. Thus, although, plastics technology was about to make great advances, for example in the development of SPX, which made it possible to design extremely thin rims circa 1983, it can be asserted that, for three hundred years, cheap metals had been the usual material of choice.
De Rigo claimed to have helped introduce titanium to a wider market using it in its 'Police' sunglasses collection from 1999. By avoiding screws and hinges in models like the Airlock designers can be judged to have created genuinely innovative products, though it is debatable to what extent these innovations filtered through to the mass of frame designs. Such frames were marketed, sometimes directly to the potential customer, as premium products standing above most other types.
So-called ‘intelligent’ materials were devised in the 1980s that enjoyed greater levels of breakage resistance. Galilee Optics, for example, used the German material cellidor emc in its Pana’che GO range (c.1987). This was advertised as having a ‘greater tendency to elastic recovery after being subject to strain while heated’. This is notable, however, for being an advertisement aimed at the practitioner, the operator of the frame heater, rather than any customer.
The deep red of this plastic frame accenturated the undualting sides, but semi-translucent colours were often preferred. NHS 524 'flesh'-coloured frame by the London Optical Company (LOCO) Unglazed supra frames as supplied by the manufacturer
Colour was considered important too. As late as 1955 Betty Ibbs could claim that most opticians were men and therefore by definition, ‘colour blind’. For example they were simply unaware of the nature of make-up. This sexist remark, like many expressions of prejudice, may have had a grain of truth behind it but was misleading in two ways. Firstly spectacles had been various colours during their history: brown wood or amber shell, white bone, grey steel, yellow brass or gold, black leather, red buffalo horn etc. These colours were sometimes due to the natural materials from which they were made and at other times due to the processes they underwent, for example ‘blued’ steel. This cannot be deemed to have had a major effect on the popularity of certain frames. (Though from the 1970s this would be a significant factor. Silhouette, for example introduced its first coloured metal frames in 1973). Secondly, in the 1950s, a range of ‘tutone’ frames, triple-laminate acetate frames and even ones with interchangeable brow rims had emerged onto the market meaning that bright reds, sky blues and greens were on offer to those who wanted them. Where Ibbs may have been on firmer ground is in implying that some parts of the optical profession were slow to embrace the change although even the National Health Service made an attempt, in this case rolling out a ‘flesh’ coloured 524 frame, popular with young schoolgirls, the whole point of which was that it was supposed to be less noticeable.
Rimless spectacles and pince-nez were part of the range offered by the National Health Insurance Scheme prior to 1948 but the new NHS did not permit rimless frames! Thus arose a commercial opportunity for a semi-invisible lens support system that stands as one of the more innovative frame designs of the century - the nylon supra.
A Supra Idea! - The Nylon Supra
The supra was a significant development coinciding with the new trend towards ‘styled’ spectacles. Neville Chappell of M. Wiseman & Co and later a prominent member of the National Association of Opticians patented a design for a heavy top bar with the minimum support for the lens beneath in 1935. He intended it to be less visible, causing the minimum of visual obstruction to the wearer, unbreakable and practical for the prescription house to utilise. The top bar itself was visible thus differentiating it from the then popular ‘Numont’ style that hid the bar as much as possible behind the lens. Following the war plastic became more common and various nitrate and acetate tops were devised, but the most crucial development was the provision of the lower support through a nylon cord. This material was invisible, strong and easy to use when glazing since the lens could be sprung in. Even the word was popular with its connotations of the much sought-after stockings. Because the NHS was regimenting frame design so much the supra mount seemed to offer a welcome alternative, causing its inventor to suggest in 1953 that the swing towards it demonstrated that ‘the public think more about their facial appearance than many of us were inclined to believe’ however Chappell was perhaps overstating the case a little. Although popular in Britain and in India, the supra did not make similar inroads in the USA where the ‘Browline’ frame with a plastic bar but a metal bridge and metal under-support was preferred, perhaps partly because it was easier to produce by machine whereas the British frame-making industry was still one in which much was carried out by hand.
As the supra grew out of the ‘invisible’ it was not an entirely fresh innovation but rather the next logical design step. Proof of this is shown by the fact that this great British invention was actually invented twice. Hyman Freeman, an independent ophthalmic optician and prominent member of the British Optical Association, filed a patent for virtually the same thing in January 1945 together with G.S. Chapman (Harry Freeman Archive) only to find that he had been beaten to it by a patent granted in 1941. In the fog of war he had arrived independently at the same design. What caused the supra to really take off, however was when licensing arrangements were concluded by Neville Chappell with Marwitz in Germany and Societé des Lunetiers in France, leading to the ‘Nylor’ frame of 1954.
GF half-eye frame of an unexciting but widely occurring style from the second half of the 20th century
Only towards the end of the century did the bulk of patients, now sometimes rebranded as 'consumers', pay for premium-priced frames. Hugh Gaitskell put an end to free NHS spectacles for adults and demand collapsed in 1951 when the public was expected to pay £1 a pair!!! Even in 1970s nearly 50% of British frames were supplied at virtually cost price. Opticians recouped their costs by making private frames more expensive, which widened the gap still more. Prices were not displayed in windows prior to 1985; customers had to ask the price and whilst the skilful salesman might have welcomed the enforced customer contact that caused, it is nevertheless doubtless that many patients preferred not to get involved.
Demand grew at various times in the twentieth century but it was usually the cheaper frames that fuelled this demand. During the 1950s the Munich-based manufacturer Rodenstock increased its frame production by eight times, from 185,000 frames to 1.4 million. Lens production in the same period merely doubled. By the 1970s the company proudly announced that ‘gold-filled’ (GF) frames were increasingly popular, but omitted to mention that they had been before, at the start of the century, when they were considered an acceptable alternative to precious metals and that they had continued to be common until the 1940s.
As early as 1935 there was some recognition that there is rarely anything new under the sun. Writing on ‘The Future of Spectacles’, Griff Jones declared that even a casual observer of the BOA Museum catalogue (published three years before) ‘will at once remark upon the number of spectacles foreshadowing what is often assumed to be a modern trend. The rather astonishing discovery is made that hexagonal, round and round-oval eye-shapes are not by any means the latest in spectacles. Even the apparently ultra-modern 'butterfly' eye-shape is anticipated in the 1840 pantoscopic spectacle’.
The concept of the retro style emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Customers would now pay good money to buy spectacles that resembled the ones their ancestors had discarded!
Where next? Discover the early trends in twenty first century spectacles!
|
