Eyeglass Design Archive
Remarkable and chic German eyewear design archive from the late 1950s.
Near fine.
Price: $1,000.00
Eyeglass Design Archive
"Besser Sehen Besser Aussehen" <br />(See Better, Look Better!)
Three-album image archive of rhinestone-spangled eyeglass designs, optical equipment, and store window displays, all from the German optician Optik-Schneider and all dating from the mid-1950s through (circa) the early 1960s. With two sample pairs of fully manufactured cat's-eye frames.
Includes two albums of original photographs and drawings of numbered eyeglass temple and rim design elements, offering several hundred potential variations with increasingly baroque and elaborate decorative elements. Two finished sample frames show the stylistic range of the firm and the era: one a standard cat's-eye shape with ingenious botanical-inspired scrolling on the temples; the other with dramatic blue and gold metallic striping along the top rims. A third album stores chronologically ordered images of window displays at Optik-Schneider, several of them dated 1955-1957. Displays show not only fashionable eyewear of the 1950s, but also microscopes, field binoculars, opera glasses, and other optical equipment.
A unique collection documenting the intersection of 20th century European fashion, technology, and merchandising.
The Object
[Breslau]: [Optik-Schneider], [1954-circa 1960]. 12.5'' x 9.5''. Three binders, with burgundy and black or grey leather covers. Containing 163 photographs in total; 158 of which are neatly mounted on construction paper leaves recto and verso throughout, protected by intact spiderweb tissue guards; sizes range from 3.5'' x 2.5'' to 9'' x 7''. Five unmounted photographs (approx. 7'' x 5'') also laid in. Several photographs have brief pen notations regarding style numbers and names; else fine or near fine throughout. Moderate wear and scuffing to album corners and covers. With two sample pairs of eyeglass frames dating from the same era; one with nonprescription lenses, one without.
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