CLASS EYES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 43, 28 October 1893, Page 348

CLASS EYES.

The manufacture of glass eyes is a profession by itself, and a lucrative one into the bargain. Parisian eyes are by far the best. The great artists in this line are chiefly to be found congregated in the Faubourg St. Honore, and some of them are also oculists. You will generally find a one eyed servant attached to these establishments, who is ready if called upon to exhibit bis imitation orb to hesitating customers. Forty or fifty francs is the price of a firstclass eye ; but in a less fashionable neighbourhood one equally good may be bought for half that sum. After a few months’ wear they lose their brilliancy, and some people pay their oculist an annual sum to be kept supplied. A manufacturer,therefore has usually a drawer full of pattern eyes, so that he can at once supply the needs of his regular customers without any trouble to them. . A good workman can make an eye in a day, bnt it is a difficult and tedious piece of work, and if it does not please the customer it is often returned on his hands. Rejected eyes are generally sold to people who cannot afford to be fastidious as to colour and expression ; while those that can be disposed of in no other way find a market in foreign parts—in Asia or in the Sandwich Islands. A Hayti general who had lost an eye ordered one from Paris, and the oculist forwarded to him what he considered a perfect triumph of skill. Six months later a letter came back to this effect:— • Your eye is of no use to me. It is yellowish, and recalls the memory of the Spanish flag. I will only wear an eye of the colours of my country.’ The oculist, after considering the matter, got a sight of the Haytian flag, and presently despatched to the patriotic warrior a splendid green and red eye, which had the good fortune to give complete satisfaction. The general, in fact, was so charmed with it that he elected to wear it on his breast as an order. It is no uncommon thing for an eye to be hired for the day, on the occasion of some festival, by a workman too poor to have one in general use. Artificial eyes appear to have originated in Egypt, they were made of gold and silver, then of copper and ivory. In the 16th century porcelain was the substance used, and the makers advertised themselves by stamping their names and addresses on the white of the eye, a practice not likely to commend itself to their customers, one would have thought. Porcelain was superseded by glass, which again gave place to enamel, and this, we believe, is the substance in favour at the present day. The best specimens look so wonderfully real, that it is sometimes difficult to believe that they have not the power of vision, and that their chief use is to prevent a person looking unsightly in the eyes of his fellow men.