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Spectacles, The Oliver Goldsmith Collection. National Glass Centre
It's a show which you might not expect at first to see in a
National Glass Centre because it looks at eyewear.
It's quite natural to associate eyewear with glass
but this is not a scientific take on the subject. It's almost looking at eyewear as jewellery.
It's a bit like the history of fashion through spectacle frames.
I knew that he had this amazing clientele list, so Audrey Hepburn,
Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Eric Morcambe, Princess Diana,
Princess Grace, you know, an absolutely amazing list
and that adds to the appeal. It's definitely a fashion assess. The medical
side of it, the medical necessity is secondary now.
In the early days, when my grandfather started, glasses were just a medical necessity.
It was an instrument for holding lenses in front of the eyes.
It was not as fashion. Fashion didn't start until the 50s
and I can probably honestly say that my father was
the instigator of 'fashion eyewear'. Goldsmith's company is one of the pre-eminent
designers of spectacle frames in this country who rose
to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century.
We wanted to look at that idea of chronology and for how
fashion design moved forward by looking at the spectacle frames,
so we split it into groups of decades. It made easier to do that by working with
Oliver Goldsmith because there has been three Oliver Goldsmiths...
the grandfather started the company in the 1920s,
and then Oliver's father took over and now Oliver,
so we were splitting it by decades, but we were also splitting it
between the different generations who had run the firm.
It's a chronological display that examines the advent and
the 'establishment' recognition of the company through the
frames that were designed, but also through the people,
many of who were quite famous, who wore them. There's two particular designs, one's
called the Consul, which Michael Cain wore in the Ipcress File, and we also have
one called Vice-Consul, which Peter Sellers wore, but not during film
work. He wore them outside of film work because he had short
sight and those two frames just seem to sell, sell,
sell. I think that people will be attracted to the
show because of the names of the clients, but I hope that when they've come and they've
seen the work, they'll go away enjoying the quality of the design and the
quality of the production. It's a very approachable display, the subject
is....there's no mystery in it, and I think people will get a lot of fun out
of the show. I never thought anyone would do such a wonderful
exhibition for me. To have it as a One Man Exhibition...I am
just over the moon and I shall definitely be bleating about it
on my Facebook and Instagram pages as soon as I get back
to London tomorrow.