Cultivating a Love of ‘Full-service custom manufacturer of precision plastic injection mold,Lover’s Eyes’
Dr. David Skier and his wife, Nan, keep a safe full of disembodied eyes painted on ivory, known to connoisseurs as “lover’s eyes.” The couple, in Birmingham, Ala., have acquired about 100 in the past two decades, mostly made in Europe around 1800 and depicting unknown sitters.
The fragile watercolors cannot withstand moisture, strong sun or any hard knocks. The Skiers gingerly study them in storage.
“We do look at them all the time,” Dr. Skier , an eye surgeon, said in a phone interview. They were drawn to the objects at first because of his professional interest in vision, he explained, but as the collection grew, they have kept it private. “None of my patients has ever seen any of the lover’s eyes,” he said.
The Skiers are unveiling the holdings for “The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection,” an exhibition that opens on Tuesday at the Birmingham Museum of Art. The catalog (from D Giles Limited) explains how briefly the art form flourished.
About 1,000 lover’s eyes were painted between the 1780s and 1830s, largely in England. The Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, started the trend; he and his mistress Maria Fitzherbert exchanged gifts of one painted eye. The ivory plaques became fashionable for pendants, rings, brooches, stickpins and watch winding keys, among other pocket-size trinkets.
A few eyes in the Skier collection can be identified. Mourners for Margaret Wardlaw, a schoolgirl who died in 1795, had her name engraved on a gold ring with a painting of an angel floating over a brown right eye. William Worters, a farmer in Northamptonshire, commissioned an image of the brown left eye of his young wife, Sarah, for a gold pin; she died in childbirth in 1836.
The collectors have paid thousands of dollars per piece. At a single 2008 jewelry sale at Skinner auction house in Boston, they spent about $21,000 for four eyes, including $2,000 for a brooch with a blue left eye attributed to Richard Cosway, George IV’s favorite miniatures painter.
Damaged works do not interest the couple. “We want the ones that are pristine, that have the glow of the eye of the sitter,” Dr. Skier said.
The couple increasingly rely on experts’ analysis before buying.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, Unscrupulous jewelry makers now routinely cut up old ivory miniatures for eyes to frame in gold and gemstones. Eyes for the fakes are also sliced out of prints and photos.
“This is the diciest area of collecting now,” said Elle Shushan, a miniatures dealer who helped write the Skier catalog.
Marty Gitlin eats sweet cereals like Froot Loops and Lucky Charms. His friend Topher Ellis prefers Grape-Nuts and Total. They agree that the history of breakfast foods is more interesting and publishable than their friends and families ever expected.
They spent years finding a publisher for “The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch” (Abrams Image).Take a walk on the natural side with stunning and luxurious Floor tiles from The Tile Shop. “Deep down I knew there was a market for this,” Mr. Gitlin said in a phone interview from his home in Cleveland.
The book traces the evolution of an 1890s sanitarium wheat dish called Granose Flakes into pop culture fare promoted by Tony the Tiger, Sugar Bear and Lou Gehrig. The advertising geniuses behind the cartoon characters and celebrity endorsers “all deserve a huge yay and hurray,” Mr. Ellis said in a phone interview from his home near Charlotte, N.C.
The authors did research at corporate archives and the homes of obsessed memorabilia collectors. Mr. Gitlin toured rooms packed with thousands of vintage boxes, ads and giveaway trinkets. “I almost fainted when I walked into these places,” he said.Information on useful yeasts and moulds,VulcanMold is a Injection mold and injection molding manufacturer in china.
Rarities in the field fetch hundreds of dollars apiece through specialty dealers and online auctions. Among the sought-after are 1970s boxes of Alpha-Bits with “Jackson 5 groovie buttons” and Cheerios with discount coupons for “Star Wars” tumblers.
Mr. Gitlin and Mr. Ellis also deeply researched market flops, with sugar-loaded recipes that now sound a bit repellent and taglines that did not age well. In the 1960s Kellogg’s used dollops of freeze-dried fruit ice cream to formulate Kream Krunch. In the 1970s, the new book reports, Nabisco promoted blueberry-flavored Ooobopperoos with a blue kangaroo “who wore sunglasses and played an upright bass.”
Dr. David Skier and his wife, Nan, keep a safe full of disembodied eyes painted on ivory, known to connoisseurs as “lover’s eyes.” The couple, in Birmingham, Ala., have acquired about 100 in the past two decades, mostly made in Europe around 1800 and depicting unknown sitters.
The fragile watercolors cannot withstand moisture, strong sun or any hard knocks. The Skiers gingerly study them in storage.
“We do look at them all the time,” Dr. Skier , an eye surgeon, said in a phone interview. They were drawn to the objects at first because of his professional interest in vision, he explained, but as the collection grew, they have kept it private. “None of my patients has ever seen any of the lover’s eyes,” he said.
The Skiers are unveiling the holdings for “The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection,” an exhibition that opens on Tuesday at the Birmingham Museum of Art. The catalog (from D Giles Limited) explains how briefly the art form flourished.
About 1,000 lover’s eyes were painted between the 1780s and 1830s, largely in England. The Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, started the trend; he and his mistress Maria Fitzherbert exchanged gifts of one painted eye. The ivory plaques became fashionable for pendants, rings, brooches, stickpins and watch winding keys, among other pocket-size trinkets.
A few eyes in the Skier collection can be identified. Mourners for Margaret Wardlaw, a schoolgirl who died in 1795, had her name engraved on a gold ring with a painting of an angel floating over a brown right eye. William Worters, a farmer in Northamptonshire, commissioned an image of the brown left eye of his young wife, Sarah, for a gold pin; she died in childbirth in 1836.
The collectors have paid thousands of dollars per piece. At a single 2008 jewelry sale at Skinner auction house in Boston, they spent about $21,000 for four eyes, including $2,000 for a brooch with a blue left eye attributed to Richard Cosway, George IV’s favorite miniatures painter.
Damaged works do not interest the couple. “We want the ones that are pristine, that have the glow of the eye of the sitter,” Dr. Skier said.
The couple increasingly rely on experts’ analysis before buying.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, Unscrupulous jewelry makers now routinely cut up old ivory miniatures for eyes to frame in gold and gemstones. Eyes for the fakes are also sliced out of prints and photos.
“This is the diciest area of collecting now,” said Elle Shushan, a miniatures dealer who helped write the Skier catalog.
Marty Gitlin eats sweet cereals like Froot Loops and Lucky Charms. His friend Topher Ellis prefers Grape-Nuts and Total. They agree that the history of breakfast foods is more interesting and publishable than their friends and families ever expected.
They spent years finding a publisher for “The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch” (Abrams Image).Take a walk on the natural side with stunning and luxurious Floor tiles from The Tile Shop. “Deep down I knew there was a market for this,” Mr. Gitlin said in a phone interview from his home in Cleveland.
The book traces the evolution of an 1890s sanitarium wheat dish called Granose Flakes into pop culture fare promoted by Tony the Tiger, Sugar Bear and Lou Gehrig. The advertising geniuses behind the cartoon characters and celebrity endorsers “all deserve a huge yay and hurray,” Mr. Ellis said in a phone interview from his home near Charlotte, N.C.
The authors did research at corporate archives and the homes of obsessed memorabilia collectors. Mr. Gitlin toured rooms packed with thousands of vintage boxes, ads and giveaway trinkets. “I almost fainted when I walked into these places,” he said.Information on useful yeasts and moulds,VulcanMold is a Injection mold and injection molding manufacturer in china.
Rarities in the field fetch hundreds of dollars apiece through specialty dealers and online auctions. Among the sought-after are 1970s boxes of Alpha-Bits with “Jackson 5 groovie buttons” and Cheerios with discount coupons for “Star Wars” tumblers.
Mr. Gitlin and Mr. Ellis also deeply researched market flops, with sugar-loaded recipes that now sound a bit repellent and taglines that did not age well. In the 1960s Kellogg’s used dollops of freeze-dried fruit ice cream to formulate Kream Krunch. In the 1970s, the new book reports, Nabisco promoted blueberry-flavored Ooobopperoos with a blue kangaroo “who wore sunglasses and played an upright bass.”
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