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Spectacles
and Vision Aids in France circa 1800 |
| The
plates below come from a remarkable series of watercolor drawings in a
French trade catalog of the early nineteenth century. These two large
volumes contain over 1,500 color illustrations of personal, household and
hardware items sold in France during that period. Both volumes contain an
engraved label of Lebeuf, a stationer in Paris. The address printed on
these labels was occupied by this stationer from 1799 to 1813. Also, an
illustration of a thermometer in this catalog has the date
"1798" on the face of the instrument. Thus, the spectacles and
vision aids shown in the catalog can be reasonably assumed to fall within
this range of dates. The availability of nose spectacles would seem to
indicate an earlier rather than later date - thus, these drawings are
believed to represent spectacles and vision aids available in France about
1800. Your comments are welcome - please send them to Alan McBrayer,
Webmaster, Ocular Heritage Society, Mcbraar@aol.com. |
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Plate 1 - Single and Double
Jointed Spectacles |
Plate 2 - Nose spectacles,
Temple Spectacles and Spyglass |
Plate 3 - Scissor
spectacles, reading glass and pocket magnifiers |
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(Click on photo to enlarge.) |
(Click on photo to enlarge.) |
(Click on photo to enlarge.) |
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Credit: The Winterthur
Library: Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera |
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