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The On-Line Museum and Encyclopedia of Vision Aids.
April 6, 2006 Wall Street Journal featured antiquespectacles.com on the front page. |
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Spectacles of Well Known People in History | ||||||
+ Larger Font | - Smaller Font We are very fortunate that the personal vision aids of many
important individuals have been preserved at institutions and in private
collections. Much insight into the development of eyewear during specific time
periods can be gained by reviewing examples which have known dates of use.
Provenance information associated with the numerous examples presented here is
assumed to be mostly correct. It has been difficult to establish in several
cases and for some of the others listed, it has not been 100% proven. We have basically tried to confirm that each object and
its provenance is believable based at least in part on the known date of death
of each person. Hopefully any related information also seems correct. We do know
that the more famous the person, the more objects which seem to appear over time
following his/her death. We have chosen to believe everything that appears
below. Kindly write in if you have questions, concerns, or other knowledge which
might be useful in the regard. The advantage of a website is that it is “alive”
and can always be updated and corrected. For comparison you are invited to visit
“Treasures - Mistaken” where the dates or descriptions unfortunately appear to
be false.
Many of the descriptions specifically under the heading “Contributions” have been taken directly from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This is an excellent resource and is very highly recommended for others to use. Included below also are known examples of spectacles used by several American Presidents. The eyewear of these famous individuals will likely appear again on this same website but under a different key heading. Certainly there must be other examples (out there) of noted leaders or famous people whose lives and accomplishments have impacted mankind during the past five hundred years of history. If you are aware of any examples which might belong on this page, kindly email the website and we will actively pursue any available information as well as the appropriate image. The Vatican Museum does not have any rivet spectacles. But we hope that their curators will eventually appreciate our international educational efforts here. Any discoveries in this realm would be considered world-class treasures and if objects of this nature are ever displayed on their Vatican Museum website we will link to these images in order to present this to our visitors also. Early descriptions of eyeglasses are present when one reviews the literature but the objects listed below have apparently never surfaced. The earliest ones on this list (likely Rivet Spectacles) include the following: 1316 Arnaldo, Dominican Bishop of Bologna, bought a pair of
eyeglasses and case Finally one additional point must be stated here. In the course of gathering the images and information for this important webpage, a group of 20th century vision aids have also appeared. Although they are NOT antiques in the strict sense of the word, they are still quite interesting to observe and these are presented at the bottom of this listing. A few have quite fascinating stories as you will notice.
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