But don't throw away those lorgnettes just yet—a former Buddhist priest–turned-performance artist based in Chicago is looking to redefine the operatic experience with his new performance, Father's To I've To Father's, an opera that is performed entirely through text messages.. The project is the brainchild of Jake Harper, who goes by the moniker Banrei.
|
|
The design of many modern opera glasses of the ornamental variety is based on the popular lorgnettes of the 19th century.
|
|
The Musée des Lunettes et Lorgnettes Pierre Marly is a museum of eyeglasses located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, at 380 rue Saint-Honoré. It is open Tuesday through Saturday; an admission fee is charged. The museum was created by Pierre Marly, optician to crowned heads, public figures and celebrities. It contains almost 3,000 objects, ranging from spectacles dating from the 13th century to wooden Inuit snow goggles, with a permanent exhibition of lorgnettes, glasses, telescopes, and binoculars of all shapes and sizes.
|
|
Items of interest include glasses made for cats and dogs, Maria Callas' contact lens, and glasses belonging to Princess Victoire of France (daughter of Louis XV), the Dalai Lama, Marlene Dietrich, Sammy Davis, Jr., Elton John, and lorgnettes belonging to Sarah Bernhardt.
|
|
Essilor manages a collection of patents and objects related to its history and collaborates with several optics-related institutions. It offered the Essilor–Pierre Marly collection (one of the world's largest optical instrument and eyewear collections, consisting of about 2,500 items collected by Marly, a celebrity optician who operated in the second half of the 20th century) to the Musée de la lunette de Morez. The collection includes medieval spectacles, bourgeois lorgnettes, walking sticks with optical systems, French actress Sarah Bernhardt's lorgnettes, the daughter of Louis XV's [Victoire de France] glasses, and the iconic white plastic Courrèges Slit (a futuristic pair of sunglasses modelled upon a 2000-year old Arctic Inuit design, utilising carved slivers of whalebone, slit horizontally, to provide anti-glare eye protection). In 2008, Essilor signed a partnership with Le CNAM/PATSTEC to join the Mission nationale de sauvegarde du patrimoine scientifique et technique contemporain (National Mission for the Safeguarding of Contemporary Scientific and Technological Heritage).
|
|
These designs were not immediately successful, however, and various styles with attached handles such as "scissors-glasses" and lorgnettes were also fashionable from the second half of the 18th century and into the early 19th century. In the early 20th century, Moritz von Rohr and Zeiss (with the assistance of H. Boegehold and A. Sonnefeld), developed the Zeiss Punktal spherical point-focus lenses that dominated the eyeglass lens field for many years. In 2008, Joshua Silver designed eyewear with adjustable corrective glasses. They work by silicone liquid, a syringe, and a pressure mechanism.
|
|
Punch The trial opened on 1 June 1891. Ticket holders began queuing at 9:30 am, and the court was full half an hour before its 11 am start time. The prince sat on a red leather chair on a raised platform between the judge and the witness box; his appearance was the first time since 1411 that an heir to the throne had appeared involuntarily in court. The Pall Mall Gazette stated that "the court presented an appearance which, save for the dignity of its own fittings and its rows of learned-looking law books, might have been taken for a theatre at a fashionable matinée", with society ladies watching proceedings with opera glasses or lorgnettes.
|
|