Pince-nez

Anton Chekhov with pince-nez, 1903
Theodore Roosevelt wearing a C-bridge type pince-nez
Spanish writer Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645), with what appear to be "nose spectacles"

Pince-nez (/ˈpænsn/ or /ˈpɪnsn/;[1] French pronunciation: [pɛ̃sˈne]) is a style of glasses, popular in the 19th century, that are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, "to pinch", and nez, "nose".

Although pince-nez were used in Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, modern ones appeared in the 1840s and reached their peak popularity around 1880 to 1900.

Varieties

Others

In this category are placed frames that should not be referred to as pince-nez, but resemble them in form and function.

Retention methods

Hard bridge pince nez glasses with chain and earhook
Hard bridge pince-nez compared with Oxfords

Pince-nez spectacles were worn by both men and women. Since they can be uncomfortable to wear for extended periods if the wrong bridge size is chosen, and also because the constant wearing of glasses was out of fashion at the time, pince-nez were often suspended from a ribbon or chain worn around the neck, tied to the buttonhole of a lapel, or attached to a special ear-mount or to a hair-pin. Women often used a special brooch-like device pinned to the clothing, which would automatically retract the line to which the glasses were attached when they were not in use.

Use in early air combat

During the earliest era of air combat in World War I, a small number of frontline German fighter pilots serving with what would become known as the Luftstreitkräfte wore hard bridge pince-nez frames for their corrective lenses, including the very first pilot to defeat an opposing aircraft (on July 1, 1915) using a synchronized machine-gun armed aircraft, Leutnant Kurt Wintgens.

In popular culture

Pince-nez is central to the murder mystery in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez. Another murder mystery, Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, features a victim found dead in his bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez.

Numerous fictional characters have been depicted as wearing pince-nez. These include Hercule Poirot in the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot, who wears pince-nez that is attached to a cord around his neck;[3] Morpheus in the Matrix film trilogy, who wears reflective-lensed pince-nez sunglasses when he appears in The Matrix;[4] Walt Disney's cartoon character Scrooge McDuck; Professor Frost in the C. S. Lewis novel That Hideous Strength, who is identified multiple times by his wearing a pair of pince-nez; and Koroviev/Fagott, a member of Satan's entourage in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

See also

References

Notes

  1. "Pince-nez" Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House. Accessed: January 10, 2008
  2. "Photo of Spring bridge pince-nez". Perret opticians. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
  3. "David Suchet reveals the secret to Poirot’s “rapid, mincing” walk". Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  4. "The End of Humanism". Retrieved 2013-11-13.

External links


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