If you’re interested in eyewear or you’re a fan of quirky museums, you’ll want to visit the British Optical Association (BOA) museum. It’s not as big or as well-known as the nearby National Gallery but its collections are no less impressive.
There’s no entry fee and moreover you can book a free guided tour (recommended). If you enjoy your visit, you can leave some money in the donation box next to the front desk.
ADDRESS: 42 Craven Street, London, WC2N 5NG, UK (a few minutes’ walk from Trafalgar Square in Central London)
British Optical Association Museum (The College of Optometrists) - London, UK
This is the oldest known donation to the BOA museum: spectacles dating from the 1850s that were sent from India to the UK in 1909.
The BOA today has over 30,000 items and actively seeks out new acquisitions.
Although it’s generally accepted that spectacles originated in Venice, Florence or Pisa in the late 13th century, most examples from that period have been discovered in Germany, the Low Countries and nothern Europe.
This is a replica of a book dated 1403 with stored glasses inside the front cover. A great idea for the scatterbrained among us!
The earliest glasses didn’t have temples (arms in everyday language). They simply sat on the nose – unsurprisingly, they didn’t stay in place so had to be held there.
This is a pair of glasses that have been dated to 1550–1650, making them the oldest original pair in the museum’s collection.
More familiar to us today are glasses with temples, which were invented in the 1720s.
On the left is one of the earliest pairs, featuring a design named after Edward Scarlett Senior, who ran “The Old Spectacle Shop” in Soho and was appointed optician to King George II in 1727.
I’m not sure what in particular makes the design Scarlett-type. Perhaps the spiralled round ends of the temples, which are visible in the glasses on the right. The glasses on the left feature custom-made knitted end covers, a nice touch combining comfort and style!
Did you know? The first binoculars were made for indoor use, specifically for use during operas. Here are some exquisite opera glasses from the late Georgian and Edwardian periods. Apparently the glasses were not just for getting a better view of the stage, but also for spying on viewing other audience members and dignitaries in the plush boxes.
Quizzing glasses, consisting of a single handheld lens, were popular from the early 18th century. In the Victorian era, they were sometimes worn on chains around the neck. Their popularity declined from around 1850.
Here’s one for Brits!
Context for everyone else: it’s an allusion to the unconvincing excuse put forward by Dominic Cummings – at the time, senior advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson – for breaking COVID-19 restrictions. More in this short video (1m10s) on the BBC’s website.
I told you the museum was quirky!
Most of us are familiar with Ishihara’s plates used to diagnose colour blindness — more properly called colour vision deficiency (CVD) given that there are many different types and black-and-white or monochrome vision is very rare among them. Here’s a CVD test from the past developed by a certain Professor Holmgren. It uses different coloured wool skeins*. During the test, the subject was given skeins in three colours then asked to find the closest colour match for each from the hundreds of colours available.
* A lovely word, don’t you agree? (Dictionary definition)
Imagine wearing one of these contact lenses. Ouch!
Optometrists have a zany sense of humour!