Some people sell glasses. I wanted to make glasses.
And I don’t mean choosing a frame from a shelf, putting some very good lenses into it and calling that making glasses. As complicated and interesting as the lenses can be, somebody else has still designed and manufactured the frame before it arrives at the opticians in a box.
I wanted to really make them. Start with nothing more useful than an idea and a flat sheet of acetate, then somehow persuade the two of them to become a pair of spectacles in our workshop in Digbeth.
I had spent years dispensing other people’s frames by then. Some were beautifully made, some were less impressive once you looked beyond the name stamped on the side, and plenty were perfectly decent but never quite what I wanted them to be. The bridge would be nearly right. The shape would be good apart from one bit. The size would suit the person, but the proportions had all the charm of a regional bus timetable.
Eventually it became difficult to ignore the thought that I should probably have a go myself.
This was not immediately followed by a natural and effortless transition into becoming a master spectacle maker. It was followed by a great deal of reading, watching, experimenting, buying tools, buying the wrong tools, making things that looked better in my head and learning that one millimetre is an absolutely enormous distance when it is in the wrong place on a pair of glasses.
That is one of the things I enjoy most about making frames. They are small enough that every decision matters.
Move the bridge slightly and the whole expression changes. Make the rims a touch heavier and something delicate becomes bold. Change the angle at the outer edge and a polite little frame suddenly looks as though it has formed an opinion. Even the way the side meets the front can change whether the glasses feel refined, clumsy, sharp or strangely apologetic.
A handmade frame begins with the person who will wear it, rather than a stock size that happens to be nearby. We can look at how wide the frame needs to be, where the bridge should sit, how much depth the lenses need, where the eyes will sit within the shape and what the person actually wants the glasses to look like.
That last part matters. Bespoke should not mean being measured for a very sensible pair of brown glasses that somebody else thinks suits your age and occupation. It means having the freedom to make the pair you actually want.
You might have spent years finding frames that are nearly wide enough but still pinch. Your bridge might sit lower, higher, flatter or narrower than most ready-made frames allow for. Perhaps you have one eyebrow higher than the other, because human faces have an irritating habit of refusing to be symmetrical. Perhaps you already own a frame with a shape you love, but the fit has always been wrong. We can use all of that.
We can also ignore it and make something gloriously unnecessary because you simply like the idea of it.
The process usually begins with a conversation and a sketch. From there, the shape is developed properly, the measurements are worked out and the design is prepared for the workshop. The front and sides are cut from sheets of acetate, shaped, drilled and worked through several stages before the hinges are fitted and the whole frame begins to resemble something that might eventually be worn by a human being.
Then comes a frankly unreasonable amount of sanding and polishing.
The machines can do the rough work, but they do not decide when an edge feels right or when a curve needs softening. They do not notice that one corner looks heavier than the other, and they certainly do not stop you halfway through and suggest that the bridge you were very pleased with yesterday now looks peculiar.
That part still relies on eyes, hands and the willingness to redo something that would probably have been fine.
Fine is dangerous in frame making. You can keep saying, “That’ll probably do,” until you have made a pair of glasses composed entirely of small disappointments.
Once the frame has been shaped, polished, assembled and adjusted, we can properly consider the lenses. Making the frame ourselves means we have control over how those lenses will sit in front of the eyes from the beginning. We are not trying to force a prescription, a lens design and a person’s face into whatever dimensions a manufacturer happened to choose.
That can be especially useful for people with stronger prescriptions, varifocals, unusual fitting requirements or a long history of glasses that have never sat properly. The frame can be designed around the optical job as well as the appearance, which is how it should be when the finished object has to do both.
There is also our Made in Digbeth collection for people who want something made here without commissioning a completely individual design. Those frames begin with the same materials, machinery and workshop process, but are created as our own ready-to-wear shapes. They are the designs I wanted to exist, so I made them exist.
The fully handmade service goes further. It gives us the freedom to change the proportions, fit and character of the frame around one person. Nobody else will have quite the same pair because nobody else has quite the same face, prescription, taste or collection of strangely specific opinions about bridges.
I don’t make glasses because handmade objects are automatically more virtuous than factory-made ones. There are brilliant frame makers all over the world, and we stock plenty of their work at Doctor Oculus.
I make them because this is what I wanted Doctor Oculus to be able to do.
I wanted the freedom to create, alter, experiment and make a pair of glasses when the right one did not already exist. I wanted the workshop to be part of the opticians rather than a decorative room where nothing particularly workshop-like happens. Most of all, I wanted to understand the whole object, from the prescription and lens design right through to the frame sitting on the person’s face.
Some people sell glasses. There is nothing wrong with that.
I wanted to make glasses.
So now we do.