Doll News Spring 2021 - 39

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: This long-handled

lorgnette is a lovely piece! The fad for these longhandled lorgnettes for humans was restricted
to a very specific and rather short time. Around
1880, at a French fair, the lorgnette, with a long,
plain handle, was first introduced to fashionable
ladies. By 1886, a London article spoke of the
" ultra-fashionable ladies " who used them. In
1887, a humorous, tongue-in-cheek article in
the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke about the longhandled lorgnette, stating that " the longer the
handle, the more stunning the effect, and the
shallower the brain. " Many fashionable ladies
bought long-handled lorgnettes using flat glass
so that they could still be seen as fashionable
even without having bad eyesight. There was
at least one article from the time stating that
the long handles were necessary to swivel the
glasses in front of the eyes because of the closefitting clothing worn at the time. The tight basque
bodice of the 1880s along with its snug sleeves
would certainly tend to prove that statement true.
By the beginning of the 1890s the fad was quickly
fading. The handle of this piece is about 4-inches
long and the glasses are about 2-inches across.
This French Fashion looks elegant with her lorgnette.
We can place these small goggles in the miscellaneous visual aid group.
Both were made for human use, although the smaller pair could be easily
misidentified as being for a doll. The larger pair are human automobile or
driving goggles, with the yellow lens color indicating that they were made
around 1890-1920. The smaller pair was made by Sun-Kraft, Inc. of Chicago,
Illinois and was intended for humans to use with a sun lamp. Of course,
that doesn't mean the smaller pair wouldn't look great on a large doll as
automobile goggles!
This tiny case and glasses were available as part of the 1940s to 1960s
charm bracelet craze. In fact, there are companies who still make these
charms today. Most sets are plated but some are solid silver or solid gold.
On the case one usually finds the engraved phrase " Love is Blind. " It has
also been found with the " Love is Blind " motto in German. Some charms
have been found with blue or red lenses, real glass lenses, or no lenses (like
the ones shown). Sometimes there is a clamshell type case. The tiny glasses
have been found with either straight or curved temples. These are not doll
spectacles but intended to be a piece of jewelry.
Many of you may be familiar with the bone or mother-of-pearl Stanhope
viewers made to look like tiny opera glasses like the two shown in the
photo. However, most have never seen something as rare as these small
opera glasses with a folding handle. They are made from a type of celluloid
with gold-gilt fittings. Although the optics are not adjustable like real opera
glasses, incredibly, the optics do work and will visually increase the size of
objects viewed through
the lens. These tiny, finely
constructed opera glasses
are extremely uncommon,
and the only example
seen to date. One of the
two Stanhopes shown in
the photo has no scenes
while the other has a print
of the Arc de Triomphe
on one side and a print of
Napoleon I on the other.

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Doll News Spring 2021

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