The following link to a Hans Meevis newsletter has some interesting images, one of 17th & 19th century eyeglasses that have diamond lenses, another with emerald lenses, and the third image of a brooch Hans Meevis made, with fabrication details. I found them a treat to see.
Beneath the image of the emerald eyeglasses is a link to the Sotheby’s full description of the glasses. (Click on the main image in the Sotheby’s page for increased magnification.)
Neil A
Spectacular spectacles!
Thank you both for sharing.
Somehow I missed the video. Worth seeing.
Neil
Beautiful work indeed. I do, though, find myself wondering if those experts got one detail wrong. While the use of cleaving seems correct for the diamonds, I kinda doubt that’s how the emeralds were sliced, since emerald has only 1 poor ( imperfect) basal cleavage, and it seems to me that those Golcanda area goldsmiths would not have trusted it not to just shatter, especially since both aluminum oxide and diamond dust abrasives were known and used. Sawing off large slices of emerald would have been a bit tedious, but with diamond or sapphire abrasive, not that bad and certainly safer… thoughts? Peter Rowe