Nothing beats this badass gambling monk with glasses

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

If you need more eyeglasses of the past: #howtodowithglassesinthepast

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast is your thread, if you fancy forgotten eyeglasses of the past. #skystorians

Nothing to see here? Well, this is a slow moving 🧵 for #skystorians and others about #eyeglasses of the past, about how to read in the past, where to buy eyeglasses, and how to do with them in general. The hashtag is #HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

Let's roll.

Wearing eyeglasses was a tricky thing, as something on your nose attracts attention. Eyeglasses were made for reading and seeing better but also had a distinctive function of making you, the one wearing eyeglasses, a bit more special. Francisco de Quevedo knew all this.

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

The history of reading had a chapter about forgetting eyeglasses in books, and about historians and librarians finding traces of these lost eyeglasses. Well, the image tells quite a story, doesn't it?

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

Let's focus upon storing eyeglasses in a premodern context. As a wealthy reader and owner of books you could always go for the luxury option: use your custom-made case carved out of the back board of a big book to store your reading tool. Impressive, am I right?

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

You might have been needing eyeglasses for reading purposes for a long time, but before you needed to find a seller offering the assisting tool. The young woman in this painting is selling eyeglasses by the dozens as a zooming in into the details of the painting shows.

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

Traces and images of #earlymodern eyeglasses can be found in paintings, books, prints, and this reminds us of the presence of these artifacts in cultural life.

And the present eyeglasses were sometimes forgotten in books, even if both were painted like in this image.

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast
@dbellingradt.bsky.social

Or, and this is likely my last post in the #HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast series for today, you could use eyeglasses as a metaphor to strengthen the argument in a printed pamphlet: look closer, see better, examine with more quality, you stupid fellow human.

Thanks for your attention! Stay alert.

For examining something in detail, like a watch in this drawing from the early 18th century, one needed eyeglasses - or needed at least to hold them in the hand to really see it without the seeing tool...

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

You could use your eyeglasses to, well, to look wild, stylish, in
contemplation, at work, out of context ... Choose your fighter:

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

Eye glasses were the essential fashion accessorie whether thou passt the day poring o'er vseless bookes or striking a bargain with Mephistopheles!
#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast