|
You could have a whale of a time this Christmas with these spectacles made from whalebone. Whalebone is a rare material to encounter in antique eyewear and the museum is lucky enough to possess two examples, one with sides and the other much earlier but sadly too fragile to place before the photographer.
This frame dates from around 1750 and you may be able to see that the whalebone has been welded as two strips and tied at the bridge after the insertion of the lenses. Natural ageing of the material, about which the museum can do very little, has caused the strips to move apart. Whalebone is easy to carve and shape and has elastic properties. As such it was used in various manufacturing industries as a forerunner of plastic, for example to strengthen parasols. Reinforced corsets might be described by their wearers as 'prisons of whalebone' but we like to think the owner of these spectacles was glad to wear them.
Don't be surprised at the colour; this material has been traditionally gathered when already rotting from the beach and depending upon the earth where it is found it may have various colours. It can also contain trace amounts of various metals including iron and copper. That said, in the early nineteenth century the demand was such that 15,000 whales a year were being deliberately slaughtered for both their bone and their oil. It used to be thought erroneously that the material could be obtained from whale fins, but in fact it usually comes from the animal's upper jaw where plates of 'baleen' are used like a sieve to allow the gluttonous feeding (some might call it overindulgence) which can cause the whale to grow to a very great size indeed. As chance would have it the museum is located in Craven Street, where in 1849 that great whale enthusiast Herman Melville lived briefly at no 25. He was the author of 'Moby Dick' two years later.
We wish all our museum users a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.