Looking into Vintage Eyeglasses by Linda Rosenkrantz on Creators.com

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Looking into Vintage Eyeglasses

Early spectacles. Monocles and lorgnettes. Outlandishly shaped sunglasses of the 1950s and '60s. John Lennon granny glasses. These are just some of the areas a collector of vintage eyeglasses can explore.

Although optical lenses were used to improve vision as far back as the 13th century, the oldest examples a collector could hope to find today — and these are of course quite rare — would be from the late 18th century.

There was quite a variety of different styles made during that period, including an early version of the single-lens monocle called a "quizzing glass," and scissors glasses — two lenses joined by a hinged handle — as well as the kind of temple spectacles still in use today. The first temple specs with rigid sides were made in 1727 by a London optician named Edward Scarlett. Bifocals, as we all learned in grade school, were one of the inventions of Benjamin Franklin. But although he made a pair for himself in 1786 — when, tired of switching from one pair of glasses to another, he cut the lenses in half and combined them within a single frame — they didn't come into general use until the 1820s.

Many early spectacles had various Lennon-like colored lenses — red, orange, amber, blue and green, while some had lenses that were dark with clear centers and others had the opposite figuration. The reason for this has never been definitively explained. One theory is that it was thought that certain colors would cure certain ailments, such as green for intestinal problems, red for mental disorders, and blue for bone and blood diseases.

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the development and popularity of the lorgnette, with their often elaborately decorated side-mounted silver, tortoiseshell or mother-of pearl handles. While these were favored by the ladies, the gentlemen's equivalent was the pince-nez. Eyeglasses that were not handheld but supported by the ears were not worn by the general public until the 1920s.

Heavy and uncomfortable, the early examples were worn almost exclusively at home.

An interesting piece of trivia is associated with tinted lenses, whose origins date all the way back to 15th century China. It seems that they weren't used to correct vision or to protect eyes from the sun's rays, but were developed to screen the optic expressions of judges in court. Sunglasses as we know them took off in the 20th century, spurred on by technical improvements made by the military. The Army Air Corps commissioned Bausch & Lomb to produce an anti-glare lens, and they also introduced the still-popular Ray-Ban aviator glasses, whose frames provided maximum protection for flyers' eyes. But it was really Hollywood that put sunglasses over the top, with stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich making them seem like a necessary component of glamour.

In the early 1900s, customers usually did not have a choice of eyeglass frames; they merely left it up to the optician. That changed in the 1930s, when glasses emerged as a fashion accessory. A big breakthrough came in 1939, when Altina Sanders' "Harlequin" frame won an American Design award. By the '50s, there were such annual competitions as "Miss Beauty in Glasses" and "Miss Specs Appeal." It was then that eyeglass frame design went wild, with butterfly and harlequin shapes, rhinestone embellishments and gimmicks like battery-operated windshield wipers and TV-screen motifs.

These have become prime camp collectibles — in particular, "cat-eyes" with their distinctive upswept brow edges, Harlequin frames and "highbrows," often elaborately jeweled or formed in the shape of butterfly or birds' wings or enhanced with such sinuous elements as swans or snakes. These have seen a considerable rise in value: Elaborate highbrows can fetch $1,000 to $1,200.

Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, most recently "Beyond Ava & Aidan: The Enlightened Guide to Naming your Baby" (St. Martin's Press). Visit her baby names website at http://nameberry.com. She cannot answer letters personally. To find out more about Linda Rosenkrantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.