Celebrating National Bone and Joint Week, a global event, which focuses on arthritis, back pain, osteoporosis and trauma. The week is designed to raise awareness of prevention, disease management and treatments as well as advances.
To celebrate and bring attention to this important health day, we are featuring bone eyewear or bone-like eyewear. The first Bone Eyeglasses in 1962 in an archaeological excavation in Yanik Tappeh by Dr Ali Akbar Sarfaraz in 1962 with the remains of the body of dead girl. They were circa 4th or 3rd millennia BC.
These eyeglasses were studied by Mr. Mir Ghafar Sahihi Oskooei of Shahid Beheshti University and considered to be medical spectacles. The spectacles were originally made of the bone of a domestic herbivorous mammal. (Wikipedia source)
But the Innuits or Eskimos made their Sun Glasses from wood, leather and whalebone.
www.worthpoint.com
Found in Syon excavation was a Riveted pair of eyeglasses that were made from a metacarpal bone of a bull. (Source)
http://syonabbeysociety.wordpress.com/
One of the rarest bones to be made into eyeglasses was Whalebone or Baleen. Used from the late 17th to the early 19th century.
Whalebone circe 1750
Circa 1800’s Bone Opera Glasses
Bone and Brass Opera Glasses (www.etsy.com/The Shop
Today you can find Buffalo Horn and bone eyewear from several sources. Mammoth Tusk Eyewear is being made by companies out of Europe, Kees Wennekendocken, and a company out of Siberia
Schrimshaw Mammoth Tusk Eyewear
Yanyar King Tut Mammoth Tusk Eyewear
Oscar de la Renta x Linda Farrow (2011)
These retro designed spex are made from human bone.
Bone Eyewear